Results tagged “chinasouthernairlines”

Not content with making cars and computers for the world, China is now on to its next big thing -- aircraft. The long-awaited ARJ-21 (pictured here) is China's very first homegrown commercial aircraft and has been launched amid much fanfare by the aircraft maker AVIC I. Now only a name is lacking, and if you can come up with a creative Chinese name of between two and four Chinese characters before September 28, RMB50,000 will be yours! (Sorry apparently English names are worth nothing).

Shanghaiist is somewhat of a frequent flyer to Beijing, and because he isn't employed by some big multinational but rather runs his own little business, he can only afford to put himself on cattle class and often has to scour the internet for the cheapest available deals. We especially love this nifty little function on eLong.com which shows you the cheapest available flight within a week of your selected departure date. That has worked to our advantage in the past because we have relatively flexible schedules, and we have flown to Beijing for as low as RMB530 (that's RMB400 for the ticket and RMB130 for miscellaneous taxes) on Hainan Airlines.

Photo from ojour.

We read the release before we saw the images, and we have to admit to being rather underwhelmed by the chic and bold and charming new outfits. In fact, we thought perhaps we were looking at the "before" images ... like, ones from the 1960s or 70s ... but then remembered that China Southern was founded in 1991. We looked up "boffo" and our dictionary told us it could mean "resoundingly successful or popular" and "boisterously funny." Neither one really fits. The uniforms are fine. They are unoffensive. They seem pretty normal. (But they are indeed an improvement on what came before them. See here, here and here.)