Before Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing, all diplomatic airplanes landing permits and handling are arranged via a special charter flight unit in Air China. However, the procedures have now changed that only specific planes assigned by the Ministry of Foreign Affair of China will need to go via the special charter flight unit in Air China. This means for all other foreign embassies in China are now flexible to assign their handling agents in China, thus giving the embassies the freedom to compare different handling agent services.

3 tips in choosing handling agents:

1. the handling agents with local expertise and local airport connections can give you first-hand information about the airport’s latest policies, NOTOM
2. not necessarily the international brands are better. quite a lot of international brands have to sub-contract to local handlers, which can cause the information to be miscommunicated at urgent situations since so many parties are involved
3. handling agents with customer dedication are normally better than those applying a standard rule towards customer service.