You see Air China very often here on the web, thanks to its very low fares not only to East Asia. During March and April 2025 I flew a total of 4 flights with them aboard Airbus A350-900, Airbus A330-300 and Boeing 737-800. Today I will try to show you how to fly business class on this carrier on their A350.

Basic information

Open-Jaw tickets were purchased for the route Vienna - Beijing Capital - Tokyo Haneda / Naha - Beijing Capital - Vienna. The ticket was purchased directly from the carrier and despite not being the easiest booking, everything went well.

Flights from Budapest are generally cheaper, but there is a newer Airbus A350 with a more modern cabin flying from Vienna instead of the Airbus A330 that flies from Budapest. In this one, I'm focusing only on the A350.

To date, Air China has 30 A350-90s in its fleet of 504 aircraft, which come in two configurations. The difference, however, is only in the Business Class seats. All the aircraft have 256 economy class seats of Recarro CL371 type in a classic 3-3-3 layout with 79cm seat pitch and 45cm seat width.Each seat is equipped with an entertainment touch screen and a charging portal.

Premium Economy on all Air China A350s has 24 Collins Aerospace MiQ seats in a 2-4-2 configuration and notably offers more comfortable seats with 99cm seat pitch and 47cm seat width.

In business class you will always see 32 seats, but with two different cabins. I tried both, of course. The first cabin offers Recaro CL6720 seats in the standard 1-2-1 configuration, which can be folded out horizontally with a length of 172 cm. There's no touchscreen entertainment, nor charging sockets. The second and more modern cabin offers the same configuration, but with Collins Aerospace Super Diamond seats, which are the same length in the horizontal position, but overall give a much more modern and fresh impression. The width of these seats is 53 cm.

Route	Aircraft type	Seat	Flight time
Vienna - Beijing Capital	A350-900	13A	8:54
Beijing - Tokyo Haneda	A330-300	14L	3:02
Naha (Okinawa) - Beijing Capital	737-8	3C	3:36
Beijing Capital - Vienna	A350-900	13L	9:56

Check-in

Air China is known for its problematic online check-in process for non-Chinese passengers. However, I don't use online check-in unless necessary and Air China, as a full-fledged national carrier, offers free airport check-in for all its passengers. Check-in in both Vienna and Naga was seamless and relatively quick. In Okinawa, however, Economy was a bit longer and quite slow, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Lounge

Lounge access is included with the ticket and in Vienna we visit the Austrian Lounge - a lounge not really worth mentioning. A couple of chairs, basic refreshments. There is seating, there are drinks, there is food, but very subpar from everything.

The lounge deserves a 5/10 rating. It doesn't offend, it doesn't impress.

There is one Air China lounge in Beijing's Business Transit Zone, and it's only slightly better compared to the Vienna airport, but given the size of the airport and the carrier, it's totally inadequate. Firstly, it is very prehistoric and secondly, as far as refreshments are concerned, it is rather weak. A bit better than Vienna, but I have to take into account the different dimension of the local hub. For me it is a slight disappointment. 4/10

So far, the lounge at Naze has been perfectly adequate. The airport here is similar in size to the one in Prague, but one can assume that there will be almost zero passengers flying in for business and it will be exclusively holiday makers. For them the lounge is perfectly adequate. Perfectly clean, big enough (there are really few people), drinks, although limited, are perfectly fine. The impression is a bit spoiled by the soft drinks machine, but that's a total minor thing from my point of view and actually it's probably a bit more environmentally friendly. The lounge at Naze deserves a solid 6.5/10 rating in my opinion, obviously taking into account the nature of the destination.

Boarding

Air China's boarding didn't quite make the grade either time. Yes, the priority and non-priority counters are stripped at every boarding, but no one cares one bit. On the trip from Beijing to Vienna, we were even let in later than the non-priority line. At least the fact that Air China does boarding through both doors was a minor consolation. Overall, though, it was a very unmanageable process. Such a simple thing to do. 3/10.

A350-900 cabin with Super Diamond seats

The first flight was operated by a relatively new, 6 year old, Airbus A350-900. The first thing that strikes me is the friendly greeting from the crew and the navigation to the seat. A great start.

On the Vienna-Beijing-Capital route, we fly on an Airbus A350 registration B-307C, which is equipped with Super Diamond seats. These seats are also used on selected Qatar Airways, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Hainan Airlines and China Airlines, to name a few. They are therefore quite common. The 1-2-1 layout is very comfortable. Although each seat has aisle access, the downside is that the seats rotate so that the window is quite far from your head.

As far as cleanliness goes, I have nothing to complain about. I ran a white cloth over everything and it didn't pick up anything either.

A 6 year old plane is really quite new, but for the cabin it is usually already in the second half of its life and there were already some signs of wear and tear. However, this was normal wear and tear from use and nothing was missing.

IFE

The only minor problem was with the touchscreen entertainment system. The range of movies and TV shows was adequate, but the heavy majority are Chinese productions that don't seem to appeal much to Western travellers. Western-produced movies and series are there, but to a much lesser extent. So the offer is not dazzling, but it will suffice in an emergency.

The problem was rather with the quality of the screen, whose responsiveness was insufficient. It was often choppy and especially the touch detection was extremely unreliable.

The music here was exclusively Chinese. With a few albums of classical classical music and one album by a western artist.

There were about 6 video games in all, 5 of which were purely children's games and one card game.

Overall, you can't rely on the entertainment system here and if you need some entertainment and you won't sleep during the flights, I recommend to have a book or your own device with music, movies or games.

Amenities

On tonight's flight, there were some small amenities waiting for us at the seat during boarding. These included a pillow with a cotton cover, an Amenity Kit, some magazines and brochures, a bottle of water, boarding slippers and last but not least not a blanket but a proper duvet. Of course, there are also headphones, which don't dazzle but don't offend either. Business class pyjamas are not offered by Air China these days.

The Amenity Kit is from the French brand L'Occitane en Provence. Unfortunately, the packaging is made of plastic. The packaging contains basic dental hygiene products - a toothbrush and toothpaste. Moisturizer, body lotion, comb, sleeping mask and earplugs. The toilet also contained facial toner and moisturizer. Unfortunately, mouthwash was neither included in the Amenity Kit nor in the restroom.

Onboard staff

As I wrote above - the cabin crew was very accommodating and we were taken care of from the moment we boarded. Greeting, seating, promptly offering welcome drinks, unwrapping slippers from the wrapper, offering a menu card and then explaining it and fully understanding the menu. The on-board perosnal was very above average, however on today's flight with a slightly weaker command of English. Not bad, but probably a little weaker than I would expect from cabin crew on an international flight of a major carrier.

Service was quick, I barely finished my drink and was offered a refill or another beverage. Food service was also quick. I really have no major complaints for the flight attendants and have to rate them very positively.

Refreshments

During this almost 9 hour flight, meal service is done twice. Lunch/dinner for the cat after takeoff and breakfast 2 hours before landing, which you can refuse as the perosnal asks you the old fashioned way whether or not you want to be woken up if you sleep.

There is always a choice of western and Chinese food. As this is a Rhine airline, of course I choose the Rhine option. And also because I want to test whether Chinese food on Chinese carriers is really as disgusting as the reviews on the intrnet describe it.

For the afternoon service there was a choice of western beef or General Tso's Chinese chicken. As a surprise, there are three things straight up - a savory salmon pancake, a celery salad with a yam ear, and a corn salad with, and I'm not sure now, either soaked pine nuts or soaked grains. I really couldn't identify it. The main course was served with steamed rice, shiitake mushrooms and vegetables. And overall, it wasn't bad at all. The salads didn't exactly wow me, but the salmon pancake and main course were good. It's definitely not the best meal I've ever had on a plane, but I have to admit that I expected far worse and in reality I quite enjoyed it. For dessert, the classics were offered, namely fruit pieces and also the traditional Austrian strudel with cinnamon whipped cream. The strudel wasn't bad, but it's not a dessert that should be served on an airplane.

As for breakfast, there was also a choice between a Western and Chinese option. The western breakfast looked extremely boring and consisted of plain omelettes, cornflakes and pastries with jam. The Chinese breakfast was served with noodle soup and... caesar salad? Besides the fact that caesar doesn't really belong at breakfast, it was disgusting. Very bitter (they served whole leaves) and the croutons were obviously not crispy, but tough. But maybe it was an Austrian time dinner? I have no idea. On the other hand, the noodle soup was full of noodles, seafood like octopus, scallop, and white fish. Soup for breakfast? Atypical for Europeans, common in Asia. But the taste was very good. In addition, there was a choice of classic pastries with butter and a small bowl of fruit. Not counting the Caesar salad, she was very surprising on this Air China flight. It is not a gastronomic experience, but within the limits and differences of cultures, I see it as a good compromise.