China Eastern Airlines to and from Shanghai

In my last post I mentioned that I was off for a few weeks to cruise up the Yangtze River, and now we are back home again after some amazing sights and assaults on the senses.  I did not see much of aviation in China except for a couple of military helicopters at Jingdezhen which is the city where Changhe helicopters are based - they were flying in the distance and one was smaller and the other bigger so I think they were the Change Z-8 heavy army transport helicopter and the Changhe Z-10 attack helicopter (thanks to Google).  Then at Wuhan I saw a Xi'an Y-20 Kunpeng heavy lift military transport aircraft doing circuits at a nearby air base (it looks like a C-17 Globemaster).  And at several places I heard the distinctive sound of military fighter jets overhead but I was never able to see them.  Then there was a big airshow and aviation trade fair at Zuhai I think which was on TV and the most interesting thing to me was a 9 aircraft Nanchang formation aerobatics team that were all painted up identically.

And now for a link to New Zealand civil aviation!  We flew to and from Shanghai from Auckland International by China Eastern Airlines who operate several flights a day I think to and from destinations in China.  Our flight up to Shanghai turned out to be on a fairly new Airbus A350-900 (December 2023) which was a nice surprise as it wasn't the type that was on our tickets.  It was B-32FQ, note that China has now gone to a mixture of numbers and letters in their aircraft registrations.

This was the best photo I could get of it as we boarded around 10 pm in the dark.

Twelve hours later arriving at Pudong airport around dawn and you get a nice view of the landing from the screen in front of us.  I gave the pilot a pass mark for the landing.

Then coming back from Shanghai yesterday we flew in a pretty tired Boeing B777-300 B-2001.  This turned out to be the first B777-300 that was delivered to China Eastern back in September 2014.