Beijing to Xi'an on China Eastern

The Four Seasons concierge was kind enough to check us all in and print out our boarding passes, so we had plenty of time arriving at the airport at 1pm.

I remembered from our last visit to just follow the red carpet to First Class and VIP security.

Seems that there are multiple lounges and we headed for V2 which was the first lounge in the main concourse.

The lounge was quite nice and much better than the China Eastern Lounge we used three years ago.    It was clearly a different lounge so not sure whether it was in a different concourse or new construction.

Great Wall Cab?  I sampled for the team.  Yuck, pretty much on the same level as AA's domestic offerings.

At around T-45, we headed out for the gate.

On board, First Class featured 3 rows of 2-2 seats which were quite comfortable, unlike the new slimline "First Class" seats in the US.

A peek back to Economy before settling in.

Good legroom with pillows and blankets at each seat.

Pre-departure hot towels and beverages.

Seat back IFE with a reasonable selection of on demand movies and videos. 

Once in the air, our cabin crew quickly started what turned out to be excellent and friendly inflight service.

And full meal service on the 90 minute flight.  It was advertised as beef, but I'm not so sure.  LOL.  And the garlic bread was very good, with loads of garlic butter unlike the single dap that United tries to pass off as garlic bread on 10 hour international flights. 

With a nearly 45 minute ground hold, there is no way that we were going to arrive on time and the flight map indeed estimated a 5:47pm arrival.  Nevertheless, our FA insisted that were on time, would land at 5:15pm and prepared the cabin for landing at 4:45pm... more than an hour before computer predicted landing.  When I showed her the screen and time, that said that was incorrect and the captain had told her that we were on time.  My first thought was that apparently Chinese FAs lie as much as American FAs.  But I think she was just confused and/or perhaps the captain had indeed told her "on time". 

Not sure what gate we arrived at, but it featured one on the longest and steepest uphill jet bridges I have ever seen or walked.

Then a long, long walk to the exit.

And another long, long walk from the terminal to the car park and our driver.