This week we're going to tick off a pretty major aviation bucket list experience. It could just be a general bucket list experience, really. Let's go fly upstairs on a 747. We're taking Air China's 747-8 from Shanghai to Beijing in business class.
But that's just the start. Along the way we'll uncover the surprising story of China's presidential plane, why they didn't have an official Air Force One, if you can call it that, until 2016, and take a closer look at China's air marshals. In most places around the world, this role is pretty secretive.
pretty undercover. You don't really know if one is on the plane. But in China, things are a little different.
Yuan does not fit in my wallet. It's too tall. Hey China, here we go. I think I can do this.
I think to Beijing. Ah, no luggage. Just carry on.
V3, okay. Thank you. That was the quickest check-in ever.
China's easy. I gotta get my eyes on this plane and then we'll go check out the lounge. But um, I think it's just here. Uh, yep. I mean I guess I knew this but I'm getting the vibe that...
Flying is very much a rich man's thing in China. We have got every luxury brand known to man here. I'm a bit disappointed it's not one of the 747-400s, but at the same time, I'm just glad that I'm actually getting to go on one. I initially booked to fly from Shenzhen to Beijing on a 747-400.
Air China still has two of these flying around. They just fly between Shenzhen and Beijing. But the day before my flight, that got swapped to a 777. So I had to do some quick rerouting and that's how we ended up here. I wasn't sure if this was going to be a 400 or a Dash 8 when I booked it. I guess to some degree, this is probably just as rare as a 400 really.
We've probably all flown on 747-400s. over 450 were made, just not many of them are flying today. Whereas the Dash 8s, only 48 of the passenger variants were ever produced.
So these are actually a pretty rare plane. You can only fly them with Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China. Air China's got seven that they operate, well six. One of them is the VIP presidential jet. Actually a quick note about that because it's kind of interesting.
The US has had dedicated Air Force One planes since 1962, but China China only started having a dedicated head of state 747 in 2016. One of these Air China Dash 8s was modified for VIP use. And you might be thinking that's a bit strange, a bit late for a global superpower. It sure was and there's some complicated history behind it. China first started exploring the idea of having a plane for their leader in the 90s and ended up purchasing a Boeing 767 in 2000 for this purpose.
It was fitted out with a VIP configuration in San Antonio, Texas before being flown over to Beijing to be used by the then Chinese president Zhang Zemin. I butchered the pronunciation and they butchered the plane. He never actually flew on it. It's reported that Chinese intelligence discovered at least 27 secret listening devices embedded in the aircraft's interior.
This caused a bit of a hoo-ha between the US and Chinese governments. But the thing that makes this even more intriguing was the fact that the plane was constantly under watched 24-7 by Chinese guards during the modification process. Was this a potential inside job? Was it just negligence? I do believe some of the Chinese military were charged with stuff, but it's ages ago now.
That 767 was handed off to Air China. They reconfigured it for passenger use and it was used for a decade before they sold it and They sold it to quite the airline and I've seen them before but I've never said it out loud. Are you ready? SCAT Airlines. They're an airline based in Kazakhstan, if you don't know.
This plane flew with them for a few years before they handed it off to Sunday Airlines. This is a SCAT... Sorry.
This is a SCAT subsidiary. That is quite the sentence to say. This whole kerfuffle with the listening devices led the Chinese government to instead do something a little bit crazy with their presidential plane situation.
For over a decade, whenever the president was going to make a big... trip, the government would take one of the regular commercial Air China 747s out of service. They would swap out about a third of the interior to a VIP presidential layout. I found like basically the only picture of it that exists on the internet.
That's definitely not your standard first class layout. Once the trip was over, they would reinstall the regular interior and the planes would continue on with regular commercial service. Absolutely crazy stuff. Nice work, lass. That was incredible.
This did mean that they didn't have to maintain a separate one. jet just for the president and it helped with some of the distrust around a specially fitted out presidential jet. They do now finally have the 747-8. This one was reconfigured in Hamburg and again had 24-7 guards present. Obviously this time either no bugs were found or maybe they just don't mind if the Germans listen in.
Who knows? Alright, I am hungry. I have not eaten any breakfast. Let's go see what a China lounge is like in Shanghai. Thank you.
Yeah that wasn't a bad lounge. It was not huge and it wasn't like magnificent or anything but they did have quite a good spread. I mean it was all Chinese food but I like a bit of Chinese food every now and again.
There was no scrambled eggs for breakfast but that's fine. I think... Are we bored? Am I running late? Also I don't want to have this drink bottle with me.
I took a picture in front of this advertising sign here, posted on my Instagram with a guest the airport question, and I got the most epic response back from one of you guys, James. This is the sort of crazy answer I was looking for. I love it. I'm going to try and do more of these when I travel next time.
So make sure you go follow me on Instagram for that. Now I've drunk too much water. All right. Boarding is happening.
How cool is that? Oops. Thank you.
Hello, Ni Hao. Upstairs, okay, thank you. Hello, Ni Hao. Upstairs? Yeah, 86. Upstairs, thank you.
Hello. Hello. Hey. Okay.
Oh. Eighty-six. Oh.
Wow, we're on board. There's a lot to look at, there's a lot going on. This is really cool though. We're upstairs. Really unique view.
The staircase was really cool too. Is this it, sir? Yes.
Oh, menu. Okay. Uh, okay.
Can I do... Yeah, cool. With ice?
No ice. Ice, yeah. Ice is good. Okay, with ice. Thank you.
No problem. Please pay attention to the safety instructions of this flight. Two people at a time.
How did an ad get appeared? Alright, we are just taking off. The seatbelt sign is still on and everything but lots of people are just like fully reclined so I'm gonna do the same.
I've tried this seat before I feel like this is exactly the same seat as KLM. That was one of my videos ages ago. It does go all the way flat This armrest does drop.
The footwell cubby is not the best, but it's quite open, so I guess you can curl up. I don't know. Look, it's in a 2-2 configuration, and it's in a 2-2-2 configuration when you're downstairs. It's by no means a cutting-edge product or anything. It is a flatbed.
Definitely not amazing. You won't get the best night's sleep in a bed like this, but I don't really know where I'm going with that. Basically, the bed's okay.
It's flat. That's its main redeeming feature. And yet, this sort of business class seat, I think, in my opinion, is quite nice if you're travelling with someone.
Be it, you know, your lover, your friend. Could be both. It's quite nice just to be able to actually sit there and talk to someone when you're in business class.
Otherwise, with all the modern day single suites and all that, you end up, you know, so far away from them you couldn't talk to them. But in this sort of seat, you can really... Yeah, basically eating a meal together.
It's quite nice. The storage is actually not terrible. You've got a shelf underneath the TV. You've got some stuff down by the side of your arm on the right side. And then there's also the storage cubby up there.
Oh, and a little bit up here as well. I think that's for drink bottles. Basically, this isn't like a modern-day seat, but it's not a terrible seat either. So we took off a while ago, but we're at 30,000 feet now. We took off 21 minutes ago, and the seatbelt sign's still on.
The flight attendants are still in their seats. This flight is only two hours long, so they're gonna have to rush the meal service. Oh, there we go. Seatbelt signs are finally off. I have no idea if you can hear me, but I'm in the front lounge.
Uh, the cockpit's just there. Basically, I think, you know, the sink suction... Basically, the sink suction thing is stuck on, and it's just constantly, uh, like, vacuuming up or something?
It's a toilet. Um, I do like the little panda situation going on. And also, we do have moisturiser and facial toner. Two facial toners. Anyway, you probably can't hear anything, so...
So let's get out of here. The cockpit's just there though, which is really cool. Is it just a thing in China for all of the drink, all of the water bottles to be 100% full? The ones in the lounge are the same, full to the absolute brim. Captain, 3KM update, final flight is 11,000m, as we are reaching air time.
11,000m. Of course China uses... all their aviation stuff is in meters. I'm really not sure if that's confusing for pilots that fly into Chinese airspace or what, but...
You know, metric, let's go metric, I kinda respect that they do it. The whole world should probably make the switch at some point. Meal service is starting. That front toilet was madness. Absolute madness.
These headphones are significantly better than the Shanghai Airlines. They're not incredible or anything, incredibly plastic-y. I wouldn't want to buy them myself, but they're actually comfortable.
I don't remember ordering prawns. I thought I ordered pork, but clearly they didn't have it, and it was a lost in translation moment. I mean, it looked ridiculously good for a two-hour flight, but even in the scheme of airplane meals, it looks pretty good.
I feel like I'm about to get some sort of heavy metal lead poisoning from eating all these prawns, but uh, they're good. I really, I used to hate pak choi and bok choi, but I guess I kind of enjoy it now. It's so devoid of all flavor and texture. I don't know. It's all been pretty good so far.
Getting into the dessert stuff now. I have absolutely no idea what this cake is. New York style cheesecake, pretty good.
Yeah, the bottom bit was a little bit too cakey, a little bit too spongy, like sponge cake, but pretty good. New Zealand butter, by the way, New Zealand butter. Finally the fruit. Crunchy cantaloupe, good watermelon, dragon fruit's good, pineapples on the verge of being unripe, almost too sour, all around gotta say that was all pretty tasty, and I guess just like mega really impressive for a two hour flight. Yep, Air China, good stuff.
There's a guy walking up and down the aisles who's got like a radio here. I'm like 99% sure this is the Chinese version of an air marshal. I don't think I've ever been on a flight with air marshals before. That guy was 100% an air marshal. How can I be so certain?
Well, I was looking through all of the footage from this flight and noticed this. Ladies and gentlemen, attention please. I'm the security team leader of this flight. Just after the safety video played, this message from the security team leader was played over the speakers. It's pretty clearly a pre-recorded message, and it just warns us all not to engage in any disorderly conduct, and that the cabin......will be subjected to audio and video collection.
Honestly, after a few days in Beijing, I was getting very used to the surveillance, so this was nothing new. It feels a little bit weird when you first land to see all the CCTV cameras and everything, but you get used to it very quickly. Quick tangent on air marshals, the idea of having armed security forces on commercial flights first came about in the early 60s when JFK ordered law enforcement officers to be deployed on certain high-risk flights to stop potential hijackings.
But they were not widespread until after 9-11, when not only did the US massively expand the scale of their program, many other countries around the world started to introduce their own air marshals. Some of these include Canada, Australia, the UK, and of course, China. China! Now, unlike the US Air Marshals, who've had whole Washington Post articles written about them, there's pretty much nothing out there about China's Air Marshal program. Apart from this ancient article about the first 500 of them that were trained and deployed in 2003, and then another one that stated that they had 2,000 of them by mid-2004.
Interestingly, from those articles, it seems like the Chinese airlines are the ones who actually employ the Air Marshals. This is unlike in the US, where they're all employees of the government. This was quite clear on my flight.
as the guy that I thought was an Air Marshal was wearing a modified flight attendant uniform and he had a body camera on. They were not exactly trying to be undercover here. Apart from the obvious role of stopping any terrorism and hijacking, these Air Marshals in China clearly act more like police on planes, stopping any antisocial behaviour. I'm not sure if it's supposed to make me feel safe or am I going to be arrested for filming? I don't know.
Anyway, thought that was kind of interesting. Never seen those before. We are all done. Air China's in-flight entertainment was a tad better than Shanghai Airlines or China Eastern's that we tried recently, at least in terms of English language content. They had a fair number of movies.
You probably wouldn't get bored here on a 10-hour flight to Beijing, but you might start to get a little bit bored if you're flying with them all the way from, say, Australia to Europe. English TV shows were particularly weak here. They didn't have many at all, but for some strange reason they had season two of Fisk.
For the unaware, this is an Australian TV show shot in Melbourne from our national broadcaster ABC. Why in the world is this the only recognizable TV show on this system? Did the content team at Air China just really enjoy it? Uh, I don't know. It's just a super strange thing for me to see as someone from Melbourne on a domestic flight in China.
Otherwise they did have quite a few games on this system too. So, so I guess that could keep you entertained. This system isn't anywhere near the worst that I've seen on a plane, but it could definitely do with a few more TV shows, maybe a bit less random. to you can always have more movies you can always have more tv shows but the tv shows here are particularly lacking Okay, upper deck on a 747. I'm glad I can finally tick that one off.
It was a pretty good experience. The Chinese airlines keep on surprising me with how good they are. I mean, I've only been in business class so far, so that could be a part of it.
Interestingly here, just as we were walking out, they put the fur- first class cabin behind the business class cabin downstairs. Strange. I think this might be due to the weight distribution stuff because the first class seats are very heavy, but I'm not even going to investigate that.
That can be for the day that I fly Air China first class. Who knows? Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed that video. Go check out flightformula.com.
I've got a blog there. I've also got the wine tracker tool. Go subscribe to Wine Tracker Plus. It alerts you to the best Qantas wine deals via email and text.
Sounds very ridiculous, I know, but you'll be buying wine just for the points before you know it. Anyway, I'll see you all in the next one. Bye. You may know him as Simon Dean from the WWE. Congratulations on a successful career.
Thanks for the friendship and thanks for all the memories. That was well and truly cool.