Fly From Changi! 從SIN出發～

In this post, we will take a close look at China Airline's in-flight publications as at October 2015. While it may be a little dry / draggy to look through airline publications, it might actually be a nostalgic thing to do nowadays given that many airlines have been pivoting to digital publications / phone apps since the start of the pandemic. Maybe in just a few more years to come, airline magazines will become a thing of the past.

(This article is written in conjunction with a China Airlines flight report published on Flight-Report.com.)
(本篇文章為「中華航空CI752 SIN-TPE」英文版飛行記錄的延伸閱讀，欲閱讀中文版完整飛行記錄，請點此)

Let us start with the in-flight entertainment guide, that has a not-so-exciting name "Fantasy SKY".

The movies catalogue was in the following format, with a short description for every movie available in the IFE system. This might perhaps be a better way to search for movies as compared to scrolling on the screens on this aircraft (recall the screen UI that was not really user friendly that I showed you earlier on in the main article?)

While the IFE screen resolution was really subpar, thankfully the music options were good. The options were printed in the IFE guide for reference too.

Next up was the inflight shopping catalogue; and yes, it was another "SKY" series publication.

A list of all the big brands with products on offer, but none that really caught my eye.

The B777-300ER model was definitely much more interesting to look at, but I don't have the habit of collecting airplane models too, so I gave this product a miss as well. Nonetheless, I would love to fly on a real China Airlines B777-300ER one day!

On top of the in-shopping catalogue, there was another home delivery catalogue that had many different kinds of products. The airline's passenger would be able to shop on the flight and get their purchased products mailed conveniently back to their homes.

There were actually more China Airlines' products on sale in the home delivery catalogue, as compared to that in the in-flight shopping catalogue.

Among the wide ranging products, there were even luggage on sale.

I was a little puzzled, wondering if it will really be cheaper to buy all these items when flying on a plane? Or is it just how passengers who have spare cash (perhaps because he/she spent lesser than budgeted in a recently concluded holiday) use up their leftover foreign currency while flying back home? xD

Alright! Jokes aside, let's move on to the in-flight magazine, which is also the last of all four publications available in each seat pocket. Note that it was explicitly indicated on the magazines that they were "complimentary copies" that we could bring home - And I did.

Contents of the magazine.

I chose a few articles to read on the plane. This one specifically was introducing Taiwan's Wanli Crabs. My hometown Singapore is quite famous for our crabs, and I love eating them, but have yet to try the Taiwanese version of crab dishes as yet. Definitely in my list the next time I fly there!

All articles in the magazine were on both English and Mandarin, which is amazing.

And then there were a few articles dedicated to China Airlines' new destinations at that point in time: Kumamoto and Melbourne. Just a random fact: Qantas codeshares on China Airlines' flights to Australia, so this will be an interesting flight for Qantas Frequent Flyers to rack up some Qantas points when flying to Northeast Asia!

Here’s the alliance introductory article. SkyTeam is the alliance that I’m the most unfamiliar with. I don't foresee myself flying on any of these airlines (Aerolíneas Argentinas or Middle East Airlines) anytime soon.

There were also two pages dedicated to safety information while flying, as well as some information on the use of electronic devices onboard during the flight.

Next up, we have the fleet info. As at the point of writing this article, the B747-400s and A340-300s have already left the airline, but a new type A350-900 joined too.

Beneath the fleet information was the airline's frequent flyer programme introduction.

There was also an article in the magazine commemorating the 15 years anniversary of SkyTeam alliance.

Next up - The section of an airline magazine that most of us will be very interested to look at, and perhaps even analyse in detail at times?

Apart from the China Airlines network map, there was a map showing international routes flown by its subsidiary Mandarin Airlines ex-RMQ (Taichung International Airport).

Under the list of codeshare partners, I noticed that Qantas was not included. There are however three airlines in this list that already do not exist as I write this article: Transaero (ceased operations in Oct 2015), Virgin America (merged into Alaska Airlines in Apr 2018), and Alitalia (ceased operations in Oct 2021).

The legend of the route maps also interestingly used a specific colour to indicate those new flight routes that have yet to commence operations. Tainan-Osaka was a pretty special one, not too sure if this flight managed to stay "alive" for long?

It was also very interesting to look at the airline's cargo routes.

The airline's cargo flights have a wide coverage in North America - specifically the United States, and flights will usually stopover at Anchorage before heading towards its final US destination.

Let's take a closer look at the cities that China Airlines fly to in each region, starting from Europe.

New Zealand and Australia.

North America.

Asia.

Southeast Asia; which includes the fifth freedom flight between SIN and SUB.

And the airline's most well-served region: Northeast Asia.

Alright, we finally reached the last part of the "seat pocket contents introduction"! Let's conclude this part with the safety information card and the air sickness bag. 

Thanks for reading, do click here to return to the main Flight-Report article.

撰文日期：2021.11.08
取材日期：2015.10.16