Shanghai Airlines Lounge
Shanghai Pu Dong International Airport
Returning to the airport, at about 2.5 hours prior to departure, we retrieved our checked luggage from self storage and made our way upstairs to the Thai Check in Desks. The business maze and lines were overflowing as without any staff or logic to why the lines were configured the way they were. I suspect many people were using shortcuts to circumvent the maze.
A whole group of Thai people were seated on the floor next to the check in. I wouldn’t mention this – but it was out of the ordinary that you find 20 people seated on the ground next to a check in desk. It stumped me – and I should have taken a photograph, but didn’t.
We were checked in and invited to use the Shanghai Airlines International Departure lounge (by invitation). Based on the signs outside, we made our way through and at 3:30 PM on a Saturday, the lounge was stuffed full of people. It was nearly impossible to find two seats together. We managed to split a four square of chairs with another traveler who left shortly thereafter.
Lounge entrance from main concourse was central and easy to find.
By this time, after scrubbing around Shanghai and the earlier flight in the morning, I was looking forward to a cold Vodka Tonic with ice or even a glass of Sparkling. Maybe I was setting my standards too high? When I got to the lounge, I realized that I was!!
The nicest part of the lounge again was the architecture of the building. The lounge is elevated over top of retail on the international concourse and large glass windows are open to the aircraft on the apron for all to see.
The bad part? There was a very limited selection of alcohol. On offer was Chinese red and wine wine. There were zero spirits to be found. There were several kinds of canned beer - Asahi, Tsingtao, Budwiser and Calsberg in the fridge. This was consistent with our Chinese lounge experiences.
I settled for a glass of the Imperial Palace Chardonnay. The food, like the PVG Domestic and PEK Domestic Lounge didn’t look too appealing, despite the lounge being operated by different companies completely (Air China vs Shanghai Airlines). I opted only for the drink only knowing we would be fed on board. It also made me appreciate the Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounges (I am thinking of HKG and SIN specifically) and the Dim Sum steamers that they have there. For an expanding market such as China, I’d love to see some better catering in their lounge offerings.
Thanks to the glass, we were able to see the soothing purple of our Airbus 330 arriving to the gate at PuDong. We headed down for some last minute souvenir shopping and to check out the gate area.
