Thanks @moondog for starting this thread. Am arranging a month long trip for my widowed mother and saw the sense of getting her via-PEK and via-SHA flights through this booking portal.

Seems I can get to platinum ahead of her SHA transfer.

The part that makes me nervous is that MamaLapLap is way more of a Luddite than even I am. What are the limits of Beijing to an elderly foreigner with lifelong research-aversion? She’ll have an iPhone but the assumption is that it will stay dormant until someone else physically intervenes to reconfigure it. It’s 50/50 whether she’ll be able to get it to work with an airport WiFi, odds slightly better at a hotel. Have already warned her about China’s move to being a cashless society but I don’t think it’s quite sunk in that Visa & Mastercard are not included in this brave new world.

Hopefully, if they are still running next Apr, she’ll be able to join either of the two free later tours organised by trip.com from SHA (11 hour transfer with departure after 1am)