Originally Posted by laxmillenial

I'd be cautious (and you were) in saying that it's not PVG ATC/Chinese authorities. It all depends on the time of day, when the flight is scheduled to get in, and what's going on in the airspace at that time. Even then, when flights are delayed in Chinese airspace, it is not a logical determination. I'll provide an example, three flights were scheduled (different carriers) from LAX-PVG and supposed to take off in the same 20 minutes of each other. To my knowledge, all three boarded, had appropriate staffing, catering, etc (based on coworkers reports). I was delayed by 2 hours due to "ATC". They were not. As far as I could tell, no additional bags were loaded, no staff/passengers were allowed to deplane or swap flights, etc. Equipment was there. Catering was there. Everything seemed fine. Logically, does it make sense? No. It could even be the short end of the straw.

HKG is different than PVG. Never experienced a delay into HKG for non-united reason.

That being said, I did fly this in the past month and a unique delay that irked me was the fact that United said it could not taxi a 747 to my gate because of the fact that there was congestion on SFO taxiways. For 2.5 hours. Despite the plane having been in the hanger since the night before. To my knowledge, no other plane departing SFO was delayed for a similar reason, even other 747 flights, only mine.

Not sure if any of this helps, just trying to show that sometimes, you can't find a pattern / cast blame on a certain reason. I've tried, and without getting someone to talk honestly about a flight and the reasons for its delay (your captain would be your best bet on the day of departure), you might not ever know or be able to predict how things will go.