Other Asian, Australian and South Pacific Frequent Flyer Programs - reward ticket between Taiwan and China

I am seeking advice on how to redeem reward ticket for direct flight between TPE and PVG. I used to pay $500 USD for a connecting flight which is rather obsurd given how close the two cities are. Any recommendation on how to find cheap direct flight is welcomed.

direct flight is never cheap, it would cost more to fly TPE-PVG than flying any other TPE -South East Asia route, never mind the distance, it's more a cost/demand thing. Cheaper choices between TPE-PVG would be to fly indirect via HKG or to choose flights taking off from Shung Shan (domestic)airport.Theses flights uses smaller aircrafts and fare is substantially cheaper than those from Taoyuan international.

Try to use award ticket with MU, CZ or CI if it is not business trip. That is probably the best way. But I am not sure if the award seat is wide open.

Eva Airways(BR)
Taiwan-China round trip
Coach: 35K
Business: 50K

China Airlines(CI)
Taiwan-China round trip
Coach: 35K
Business: 50K
First: 90K

It's very difficult to get an award seat in these populated routes...

If you belong to STAR group of airlines (A, AC,TG, SQ, ect), you might try Shanghai Airlines, or Airline China which I got an award in C class.

I've used my UA and BD miles for TPE-PVG business and economy class tickets on Air China (CA) since they started the service, never once had a problem of not scoring a seat on the date I wanted.

I've redeemed 3 roundtrips in C and 1 in Y over the last 2 years, and I also had 2 roundtrips on FM in C PVG-TSA.

TSA flights will be harder to get as the demand is stronger AND the aircraft are smaller, as TSA is right in the Taipei city centre.

One can use US miles to get C tickets real cheap - 30K vs 40K with CO and UA.
From reading other threads it seems that CX/Asiamiles blocks PVG-TPE/TSA to divert traffic to CX's own TPE-HKG-PVG (requires more miles).

Get a copy of Taipei Times or China post, tons of cheap fares listed in there