3. The Flight

The Air China 747 which took me to Beijing

A word to describe the actual flight to China from the US is endurance. This applies to no only the brutal 11-14 hour non-stop jump from the US to Beijing, but to the shopping of the tickets.

Any trip should start with as much research as you can manage. With the help of the Internet you can find reasonable prices for both flights and accommodations.

Orbitz, Priceline.com, and Travelocity are a few ways online to get a deal on the flight costs. Online options are the way to go for convenience. On most all sites it's simply a matter of typing in the departure city, arrival city, dates of departure and arrival and return. That's it. Hit the 'Submit' button and the automatic search engines search for at least twenty different options.

You can search by price, class, or carrier. Price is always my keyword.

When I visited Beijing in February, for the Chinese New Years, I actually used a great site called FlyChina.com. Obviously, the site specializes in flights to and from China only. But, this site gave me the absolute best, lowest, price I could find at that time. The only drawback of FlyChina is that they can have a limited amount of seats available at any given time.

This limitation was the case when I wanted to fly back to Beijing in June. FlyChina.com was sold out until August. So, I found the next best deals at Orbitz.com. The only problem with Orbitz's flight was that it had two stop-overs before heading to Beijing. One stop over was in Memphis; the other was in San Francisco. 

View from the terminal at PEK

These stop-overs contrasted the relatively straightforward flight in February where I flew to Detroit, then a non-stop directly to Beijing.

I think there are two kinds of travelers when it comes to stop-overs. The group I belong to is quite satisfied with a long non-stop flight to the final destination. The flight from Detroit to Beijing was fourteen straight hours in the air. I prefer this non-stop flight. I can settle in for the 'long haul' and slip into a frame of mind that when the plane lands, I'm where I want to be. No running through airports to catch a connecting flight or slipping into a temporary 'rest' while waiting on a later connection. 

This 'running' was the case in my Memphis connection. My flight into Memphis arrived at 8:10am, and the flight out of Memphis to San Francisco left at 8:50am. I was concerned that if my flight into Memphis was a bit late, I could possibly miss the connection. 

All that nonsense and worry is for the second kind of traveler, the one that sees the value in being able to step off from three to four hour flight and rest a bit before continuing on with the connecting flight.

While I can see the rationale here, I still prefer to 'settle in' and endure the acknowledged, brutally, long flight.

Fortunately, I had a window seat on all flights this traveling day. In February's trip I had the innermost seat on the three rowed 747 plane. At 6 foot 4 inches tall, I was a bit cramped in that middle seat. The window seat provides a few, critical inches more to stretch my long legs out a bit.

On this last flight over, the food was exceptionally good, the movies were OK, and the company was great. I sat in row with an optical network specialist and a professor of technology. Since I'm so much involved with all things related with the Internet, we all had some good conversations as we casually leafed through our various newspapers and magazines.

Things other than good seat mates on a flight to make it a bit more bearable include, reading material (lots of reading material), a portable CD player with some of your favorite CDs, additional snacks (I brought pistachio nuts, Mars chocolate bars), and maybe an extra bottle of water. I also brought along an inflatable wrap around neck pillow and eye covers for a more relaxed sleep. The neck pillow prevents you from sliding over onto your seatmate and drooling on him/her. It manages to keep you upright and you relax a bit more realizing you don't have to worry about ending up on your seat mate's shoulder.

Once you're settled in and in the air, all worries and concerns seem to slip away. All the concerns over connecting flights and seat preferences turn into "When do they serve dinner?"

In my next installment to this column, I'll describe what occurs once you've landed in Beijing International Airport.

The tarmac at Beijing International

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