Thank you! That is what I've been arguing for the last few posts.

While I think an experienced AA supervisor should have been aware of all the subtleties of China's TWOV, for the inexperienced check-in agent, absent any other information, he or she would have fell back on the common meaning of transit and denied OP boarding. It's a classic case of two people with different internal semantics for the same word.

There is no one to blame here. But a better decision support tool can be a solution i.e. upgrading Timatic to make it more intelligent.

Perhaps .... but the practical fact is that its really up to the Chinese immigration officer letting someone in. In some cases, they might exercise their discretion to interpret the visa waiver policy to apply a more common sense or traditional view of a destination and transit point. If they did, then they would treat PVG as the destination, rather than a transit point. From those postings, sounds like many posters have experience with Chinese immigration officers interpreting it in a loose sense. On the other hand, there are certainly individuals who's names will pop up in the computer at Chinese immigration and receive more scrutiny.

On the other hand, if someone gets rejected because the Chinese immigration officer applies a traditional interpretation, then AA is on the hook and AA will look to the GA. If you were the GA, would you want to be the one who inputted NRT as the destination in Timatic under OP's itinerary? I don't think its fair to describe this agent as a rogue agent.

There is blame here. The agent was in error. The agent decided to take it on themselves to define and declare what was, and what wasn't a transit or an onward journey to a third country. On that basis they didnt use TIMATIC correctly, and instead only got the results out of TIMATIC that they wanted (ie visa required).

The airline could have called immigration in shanghai. They could have called their own office in China. They could have boarded the passenger and asked the passenger to sign a waiver incurring costs in the event they had to be transported back. They could have suggested the passenger buy a fully refundable ticket to Hong Kong (or wherever was cheapest) rather than reissue the existing ticket.

But they had their mind made up the passenger wasn't gonna fly.

I am not sure any agent, who hasn't had a prior encounter with the OP's situation, would be able to deduce that NRT should be entered as the destination unless TIMATIC explicitly contains such suggestions. In the agent's mind, absent knowledge of the nuance, OP's itinerary looked just like a round trip with the destination being Shanghai.

I do agree with you that the agent could have been more patient and pursued this more with a more knowledgeable authority.

Perhaps because of all the complexities you describe Chinese immigration have simplified things back to the bare basics. They simply look at your inbound and outbound flights. Different countries? You're good to go.

Chinese immigration can spend a long time processing a TWOV... sometimes 10 minutes or more these days. They'll check your itinerary with a fine tooth comb, perhaps ring the airline to confirm you're on the flight. They'll photocopy documents, get your phone number, all sorts of things... but illogical/strange routings are not something they even bat an eyelid at (illegal routings yes, but not just something unusual).

Yes, but the OP says in their first post that they produced confirmation from the embassy that the itinerary was compliant. That should have prompted the agent to either try again, or to escalate.

Hmm interesting. Does that mean an itinerary of JFK-NRT-PVG-JFK also satisfies the TWOV?

Nope. AA was wrong. The OP's routing is 100% legit.

All China (and most other TWOV, including Argentina, FWIW) cares about is that the inbound flight and outbound flight are to different countries and that the time in country is under whatever limit is established. And the OP 100% satisfied those conditions.
This is correct.

The theory that it is okay for AA to enforce rules that are not compliant with the immigration policies of the destination is ludicrous. Why would it be acceptable for AA to declare that I need 3 years validity remaining on my US passport for a trip to Paris? That's essentially the same thing as this ruling.

Alas, it is poorly informed. If AA is enforcing policy this way then someone needs to reeducate them. Because they're just making crap up.
Yes.

^

I did LAX-HKG-PEK-SFO and CX in HKG denied me (now truth be told I expected it may happen - did a few meetings in HKG across 7 hours, went back to HKG airport and it was caught when checking back in (wasn't able to get the BP for HKG-PEK out of LAX and LAX CX staff mentioned nothing). My PEK-SFO segment was on UA (ticketed on CX ticket number) - CX attempted to change me to be HKG-LAX and asked if I wanted to stay in HKG longer which I thought I would do. However I had UA change my PEK-SFO segment to SAME day - flew to PEK as this satisfied CX as a true transit. Got to PEK - showed my old UA itin, got in with TWOV - changed my UA flight back to 2 days later.

Suffice to say; I expected that PEK Immigration control - may not let me in. Expected worst case to continue home, OR back track to HKG and spend more time there. Burden was on me.

The airlines can customize what Timatic shows to their agents. But consider that 99% (guessing) of their non-Chinese passengers going to China don't have an eligible itinerary and need a visa. Showing a complex explanation of visa-free transit rules for every single passenger makes the agents' job that much harder and check-in process that much time consuming. It might make sense to let the staff process the regular passengers, and have a knowledgeable employee ready to handle the exceptions. Clearly, there were no knowledgeable employees in place when the OP tried to check in.

A valid point, but it has never been documented in the years it has been implemented for several hundreds, maybe thousands of trips. Law of averages would presume someone would have been denied by now and talked about it. The USA is only a fraction of these trips and it's been denied by FAs multiple times, but zero times by border guards in China.

You presume the immigration officer is reading the same text as we are. It's more likely they have a different set of text and thus not a problem: "Does traveler have an onward ticket to a different country than the one they arrived at?"

The rules are extremely well defined and are bear bones simple, so there is little if any room for "interpretation".

The text about USA and GU/MP should be improved. Someone may interpret that TWOV involving any point in the USA is invalid. In fact it was added after someone tried USA-PVG-GUM which they didn't want to allow.

Black and white...

A - China - B OK
A - China -( B-A ) OK
A- China - A NO