I'm searching for flights mid-April with a mid-May (dates are flexible) and I can't find a non-stop flight between either airport in Taipei and Shanghai for less than about $800 per person on a non-chinese carrier. I've check ctrip, travelzen, and expedia.

What gives? I know this is a regulated route, but that's a bit much IMO. For my flight before chinese new year, I could get a roundtrip for about $400 on TransAsia. Do fares tend to drop closer to the travel dates or is there some event happening in either city I'm not aware of in April/May.

Wait, why don't you want to fly a Chinese carrier? Trying to do your trip not using a Chinese carrier is like trying to fly HNL-Mainland US on a non-US carrier. TPE-PVG RT is typically in the $400-500 range anyway, I found plenty of flights on CZ/MU for $400-600.

Any reason you're avoiding Chinese carriers? The non-stop routes are split 50/50 between the Chinese and Taiwanese carriers so you're limiting your options right off the bat.

Unfortunately this route is always a little pricey in my experience, if anyone has any strategies to get a cheaper fare, I'd be interested.

The good thing is that you can now fly from Taipei-Songshan to Shanghai-Hongqiao non-stop, which is a vast improvement over the bad old days of transiting Hong Kong to get between the PRC and ROC.

did you try airline website?

Generally the SH route is the most overpriced of all the routes ex-TPE. The taxes and fees alone are 100$ about. Often the cheapest way to get to China from TW is to fly Cebu Pacific through Manila. However, there are other options....

If you're leaving from mainland China to TPE for a R/T and have a Chinese bank account you can purchase a special from the CZ specials site here:

http://air.tenpay.com/pages/international/tejia.php

These flights are only about 1000rmb, but none of them go to Shanghai....of course you can just link up with a high speed train or a connecting flight for under 100$. Wuhan is an option for that....if you play around with dates to shanghai you'll find a round trip for about 2000 rmb which is about 300$. Again these don't work ex-TPE but only ex-PVG or any other city which CZ has flights to TPE from. It's the cheapest option I know of....

CTrip does not price well for international flights - check out qunar.com or look at the specials on the airline pages and wait a little bit longer....Chinese flights are rarely cheaper months in advance....Usually I just use Asia Miles since it's a good deal compared to actually buying the ticket....

OZ doesn't fly SHA-TPE nonstop (only Chinese and Taiwanese airlines do). What's with your aversion to Chinese carriers?

Bad experiences with chinese carriers. Trying to look for NS since we're flying with a young child and elderly grandmother.

$400-500 R/T was what I was aiming for. I'll check the airline sites and qunar.com.

Just use miles; 20k DL/UA provides a pretty good return even at the $400 mark, let alone twice that.

My bad, I meant TransAsia, not Asiana

For instance like what? While you're free to have your own opinion, if you ask me the aversion is somewhat silly. I fly Chinese carriers all the time and while different than US carriers slightly, bad experiences are no worse than US airlines. In fact, I've had more issues with US airlines than Chinese ones.

Sure, with thousands of travelers daily everyone will have had good and bad experiences on US and Chinese airlines too. It is more the consistency of two problems with the chinese carriers that cause me to try to avoid them - consistently late departures if not canceled or shifted after booked and surley passengers and employees.

Now they can't do anything about the other passengers, but they can about the other items. On the positive, I do like flying in China due to the more reasonable security, good facilities, and newer aircraft of the Chinese carriers.

While they could surely stand to treat us passengers better during delay situations, the most common cause for delays --ATC holds-- affects all carriers (with the possible exception of KN, an offshoot of the PLA, which is one of the major causes of ATC holds) equally.

I've never flown on Trans Asia Airlines, but I'd be surprised if they were better from a customer service standpoint at PVG than MU or CZ. Sure, it's a low bar, but Taiwanese airlines aren't exactly considered top shelf on FT.

Anyway, I want to reiterate my suggestion for you to use miles for this trip... and be happy with whatever airline you are offered... it's only 400 miles!

Hmmm... How can I use skypesos to go PVG-TPE RT for 20K? I think you would have to go through NRT, wouldn't that increase the miles needed substantiatlly?

You can use them on China Airlines, China Eastern, and China Southern. The first fly that route for sure, and CZ does as well iirc. Seats are pretty easy to score.

I used MU and CZ to get to TPE, it was a great deal as taxes are typically around $75 and tickets (incl taxes) are around $500.

While I agree in general China airlines tend to be more delayed due to "ATC" reasons, most of my flights are on time if not early and delays isn't a reason for me to avoid the convenience of flying them in China/Asia, particularly when I can use them to fly for 20K miles when I can never find DL miles at LOW level intra-Asia.