Flight Log of Air Macau Flight 225 and 898 from Hangzhou to Hanoi

January of 2018. I know staying in my bedroom for four weeks of my winter break back in China would be boring, and even more for my mom who had been basically doing nothing for half a year recovering from major surgeries. So my dad advised us to take a short vacation away to somewhere warm in Southeast Asia, and that's how this trip to Vietnam took place.

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As for the destination, my mom's ok with anywhere other than her bedroom, so Southeast Asia minus all the places I'd been to, minus all the places famous for water activities (which are a lot, but unfortunately my mom's allergic to any water above her chest), I was left with Vietnam and Indonesia/Bali. Volcanos were more active than what my mom's comfortable with, so we picked on Vietnam. My mom didn't want the trip to be too long, and I was more appealed to Ha Long Bay in North Vietnam than its colonial South, so we planned this eight-day trip covering North Vietnam from Ha Noi to Da Nang.

For flights, the two carriers offering the most attractive fares were China Southern and Air Macau. I haven't tried Air Macau before and North Vietnam was the only destination where Air Macau could possibly take me (the other one was Bangkok which my mom and I visited in 2016), so that's not a difficult choice.

One thing I found rather surprising about Air Macau is that, it's offering emergency exit seats for free during online check-in period at Hangzhou (and at any airport other than Macau I guess). And most of its Airbus 321 has only four seats in emergency exit rows, leaving the window seats behind them with extra legroom. (For reference, this A321 has registration number B-MCC.)
So this time, I picked seat 9F on the starboard, since this flight, if on time, would be perfect for aerial sunset watching. Unfortunately, due to air traffic control on the notorious Southeast China Coast Corridor(yes I made this name myself), the flight's delayed by an hour. And Air Macau's captian insistence to wait 20 minutes and 8000 meters in elevation before turning off seat belt signs combined with the fact that I was sitting right across a cabin crew (there's no crew seat in front of 9A) means I was sort of confined with my camera. So, plan spoiled.

By the way, after four segments with Air Macau, I found that water was probably the only drink they offered in coach, no juice and no soda. If not for their free checked bag, I would 100% take Air Macau as a LCC.
Which is pretty ironic given that Air Macau was actually a highly O&D carrier for their Macau hub. After we got off the plane at Macau, only a handful of people were heading for transit while basically the entire plane for arrival, and their O&D market should yield them pretty decent revenue (that's why they were oftentimes offering the lowest connecting fare between China and Indochina), for which providing average service among competitors should be the basics I guess.
Oh, competitors, that makes sense, because Macau Airport did actually see heavy LCC presence.

After sunset, thick clouds meant there's nothing exciting to watch outside.

After we got off the plane, I found the tiny corridor leading to arrival/transit was decorated with pictures about the airport's history. Some interesting facts: It's the second airport built entirely on reclaimed land (after KIX, before nearby HKG), it once held the longest nonstop domestic flight to Lisbon as a colony.

Air Macau originally scheduled the same plane (B-MCC) from Hangzhou (NX225) to continue service NX898 to Hanoi. A last minute change and B-MCC was used on a flight to Beijing that's already heavily delayed. So that night, it's B-MCD that took us to Hanoi, which came from Beijing, where punctuality is the abnormality.

I wisely picked a seat on the port side that night, so that I could snap these photos of Macau Airport and its surrounding before we went into clouds, which were only a couple hundred meters in elevation.

Since it's a night flight, Air Macau only offered snacks, which came with more packaging than the candy they contained. So I didn't bother to take photos and record them.

Although the flight's slightly delayed, and immigration at Hanoi Airport took us a little bit longer than expected, we still made it onto the last airport bus downtown. So we checked into hotel and called it a day.
END