In fairness, the large majority of DL-Don's complaints are about the Shanghai hub and not the airline. China Eastern did downgrade his plane and served mediocre food. We don't know about the luggage (2 airlines involved and probably a third party).
I flew through PVG late last year. The airport is a real mess, my bad experiences were Delta check-in, immigration, lounge and the boarding process. Delta did hand out three notices apologizing for various issues.
Overall, I suspect third parties determine a lot of your customer service "experience" at at PVG, and that the airlines have less leverage than in other places.
But the China Eastern flight Sydney to Shanghai was fine, as was the Delta flight onward to Detroit.
One idea to reduce stress would be to break the journey in Shanghai. I stayed two nights downtown using the 72 hour transit-without-visa program, hat tip to FT for informing me about it. Then you are entering and exiting PVG "normally."
Last edited by Justin026; Apr 24, 2016 at 7:09 am