I'm truly indebted to the level of detail on here.

Thank you 889.

I will make enquiries as to visas, although it has to be said that I have only arranged them for actual visits to China rather than stopovers, so am unsure as to how that may work.

When I looked on www.flightaware.com for the punctuality of PS287 the timings were different to the ones posted! The only similarity is that on www.flightaware.com on certain dates there was no data. These dates coincided with the dates posted.

I wonder which is more credible?