Originally Posted by
SFOTraveler1984
I find it also strange, that CX doesn't sell this itinerary on their website. If you put in origin = PEK, you cannot select any mainland China city as destination. At least not when trying to book a simple "one-way", only works with a "multi-city" booking...
It's not strange at all, neither CX nor KA have the right to sell self-operated domestic Chinese flight tickets! If CX made a business of this it would blatantly be a violation of various CAAC regulations. Now, for one off folks like yourselves booking strange FT-style itineraries
, I'm not sure if you'll get stopped or not. But it's not something CX/KA are allowed to make a business of, absolutely not.
Your question about cabotage is a valid one and I'm curious what people with experience say. It's definitely not as simple as
peasant's reply makes it out to be, unless he/she is speaking from intimate experience. I'm definitely in
flubber's camp here.
Just saying "Hong Kong is part of China" absolutely doesn't solve the problem. It's an entirely different immigration jurisdiction, HK negotiates separate agreements with countries for flights from China, etc. Strictly speaking from a commercial aviation perspective, Hong Kong operates like its own country. In your case, that Hong Kong is part of sovereign China at the level of nationality / territoriality is irrelevant...what matters is how is it treated for commercial aviation purposes. It's much more a separate country in that case. Although I'm still not sure if anything will happen to you.
If CX lets you on, I suspect you'd be fine. Chinese immigration systems would see you as gone from Beijing for what, 8-9 hours before re-entering in Shanghai? I don't think that's a problem at all. After all, what if you were indeed flying somewhere else, and decided to change your mind and fly to PVG at the last minute from Hong Kong? And if you're really paranoid about it and had an extra 30 minutes, couldn't you enter/exit Hong Kong, if you have a passport or HKID allowing easy immigration? Then I presume the complaint would be nullified completely.