Any Tips for Cincinnati to Wuhan
 

I have been invited to Wuhan by my deceased wife's family. (Some of you may remember threads from the past about my children's visit 2 years ago.) Between my children's school schedule and the fact that I am buying a house on 5/18, the earliest I can leave is probably around June 1 -- which is not ideal because of the Wuhan heat. However, my 14 year-old boy and 9-year-old girl will obviously benefit immensely by visiting their relatives. Particularly my girl who speaks perfect Chinese but doesn't want to speak it in the U.S.

I understand that plane tickets are expensive, and I am wondering about suggestions. Also, wondering whether it would make sense to fly into Beijing or Shanghai and then take the train to Wuhan. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DB

China Southern offers a SFO-Wuhan flight that operates certain days of the week.

I think the train is overnight, about twelve hours from what I hear from Chinese students who must travel to a USA consulate for student visas, but there may be more expensive faster trains.

Flights might be about the same price and much more convenient since you're already at the airport, assuming that you can connect on the same day as your arrival from the USA. Anything through NRT will arrive too late, so look for TPAC nonstops into PVG or PEK from SEA, DTW, or other DL partner international gateways such as LAX.

Arriving late directly from ICN/NRT is far preferable to any itinerary that involves a connection in PEK/SHA (in which you still arrive late), but I like the idea of SFO-WUH nonstop the best.

Insofar as getting a good price is concerned, I would google Korean travel agents in LA and NY, and see what they come up with on KE.

I have had time to think through my potential itinerary a little more carefully. I will probably stay in China about 7-8 days and my children will probably stay about 3 weeks with their relatives. Since my children will be flying back as unaccompanied minors, they at the very least, will have to take a train to Beijing or Shanghai on the way back because the American Airlines won't accept the children from a Chinese connector airline. If I remember correctly, the bullet train to Wuhan can be accessed from the Pudong airport, which would be very convenient.

Am wondering why no one suggested bullet trains. They seem to be reasonably priced and convenient. Any additional suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

DB

Because the train stations are usually not near the airports (e.g. PVG is 60km from Hongqiao).

Why limit yourself to US based airlines?

I was implicitly thinking of DL and partner flights since the OP is based at CVG, which is still sort of a DL hub.

There are no trains departing from Pudong. Most bullet trains depart from Hongqiao which one to two hours away depending on time of day.

There are apparently 5 nonstop flights per day between cvg and SFO, so connecting to sfo-wuh shouldn't be too difficult.

However, I have had trouble pinning down exactly what days that flight operates (e.g kayak/qunar only pick up a handful of dates in June/July).

In Response to several questions:

1. Why am I using American Airlines? My children will stay 3 weeks and I will stay 1 week. I understand the unaccompanied minor program much better with respect to American Airlines as opposed to others, and I will need to use it. (Chinese airlines may not have unaccompanied minor program at all. Also, my few attempts in the past to contact Chinese Airlines directly have been worthless.)

2. Don't understand the part about Pudong airport not having connections to bullet train. This what I pulled up from Wiki: "The line runs from Longyang Road station in Pudong to Pudong International Airport; The Pudong International Airport station provides a transfer to Line 2, but the Longyang Road station provides access to Line 2 and Line 7. At full speed, the journey takes 7 minutes and 20 seconds to complete the distance of 30 km (18.6 mi)"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangha...Train#Stations

However, I realize wiki isn't authoritative and many posters here are very knowledgeable. So, my question is: Is there a reasonable way to get from the Pudong airport to the bullet train station that takes you from Shanghai to Wuhan? Is the Wiki article wrong? Also, as I mentioned earlier, my children will have to take a train to Pudong to fly back to the U.S. because they must stay on the same airline to use the unaccompanied minor service.

Thanks, DB

You are speaking about the Maglev Train, who just runs between Longyan Lu and Pudong Airport.
The bullet trains to Wuhan are all going from Hongqiao Train Station.
You also have slower trains from Shanghai Railway Station and South Station, but these ones need about 15 hours to Wuhan.

Do you know which station in Wuhan is your final destination? They have 3 different ones and all have connections to Shanghai by bullet train.
You have Wuhan, Wuchang and Hankou.

The confusion here over trains arises as a mix-up between bullet trains (conventional high speed rail, i.e. the fast train between Shanghai and Wuhan in your case) and the maglev (high speed suspension rail) train between Pudong and Longyang Road.

The advantage of Hongqiao is that it is physically connected to the railway station from which most high speed rail ("bullet trains") leave. At Pudong you can take the high speed maglev train to Longyang Road, but that won't get you much closer to the mainline Shanghai-Wuhan trains. For that you will probably need to take the Metro (line 2) from Pudong to Hongqiao train station (i.e. to Hongqiao airport). Hence the suggestion that flying to Hongqiao directly is a better option.

Edit: qpr was quicker off the draw fired off his/her "bullet" of a reply as I was typing mine!

As others have mentioned, the main international airport in Shanghai is Pudong (PVG), which is to the far East of the city. It's linked in 7 minutes to eastern Shanghai via the Maglev train.

The main domestic airport is Hongqiao (SHA) in the far West of the city. The airport is adjacent to the Hongqiao train hub (I think you can walk there via tunnels). You can get a direct bullet train (D trains) to Wuhan (both Hankou and Wuchang) in around 6 hours for $43.

The two airports are linked by metro (I think there is a change, but it's 1 line), but takes 2 hours. There might be a direct bus as well.

Have you considered driving to ORD, and buying a ticket from there? Hainan Airlines (HU) seems to have some ok fares, with 1 stop in Beijing (overnight on the way to China, 3 hours on the way back). HU are fairly good - i'm sure their ticketing desk in ORD will be able to help re UMs.

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http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Hai...nes/minors.php

qpr It doesn't matter where we arrive in Wuhan. One aunt lives in Wuchang. Another lives in Hankou. There are family members to pick us up from any part of Wuhan. Thanks to you and the other posters for your very helpful hints.

A couple of follow-up questions. 1. What does the Metro cost from Pudong to Hongqiao? Also, is it a direct trip -- no stops to board other buses? 2. I have used search engines to trip to get flights to Hongqiao and they typically redirect me to Pudong. Is there any practical way to check and see if I can fly into Hongqiao?

If you fly into Pudong airport, the only ways I would consider getting to Hongqiao would be 1) Airport Shuttle bus (RMB 30 pp and yes it is direct) or 2) taxi RMB 200. I certainly wouldn't be dealing with the Metro with three of you + luggage.

Hongqiao has limited international incoming flights, all of them regional: Tokyo HND, Seoul GMP, Taipei TSA, or Hong Kong HKG. I doubt if you will find any USA flights to any of those airports except Hong Kong. And transferring NRT-HND or ICN-GMP or TPE-TSA is going to be at least as much trouble (or more) than transferring PVG-SHA.

If you can't make the SFO-WUH nonstop work for you, or if cost-prohibitive, then I recommend flying to Pudong, taxi or shuttle bus to Hongqiao depending on timing and your budget, bullet train to Wuhan. Or, fly the last segment PVG-WUH, if you can get all on one ticket so you're protected in the event of misconnection, and the connection time at PVG is not too long or too short. On the reverse journey, relatives may have to take them back to Shanghai by train, possibly meaning an open-jaw return CVG-WUH + PVG-CVG.

Did you call CZ/DL to inquire about this? If you can pull off the CZ flight, your life will be MUCH better. Feel free to PM me after you confirm the unaccompanied minor situation; I will help you: 1) find dates that work; and 2) get the best fare possible.

JieJie,

Thanks for your very useful suggestions. Sounds like direct airport shuttle would work for me. Someone else has suggested a taxi. I know they are cheap in China, but I wonder whether I could trust a taxi.

DB

I'd really skip the train if possible—especially arriving at PVG, it's a huge hassle.

Why not do something like:

CVG - LAX (pick any flight...)
LAX - ICN (KE12, redeye, departs LAX 11:30 arrives ICN 4:40am)
ICN - WUH (KE881, departs 9:10am arrives WUH 11:10am)

ICN is an easy airport to transit, you won't have any annoying ground transfers, and KE has far better transpac service than any of the US flagged carriers. I'm also confident that KE can handle an unaccompanied minor without problems.

A year or two ago there were reports on FT of DL being unwilling to do UM handling if a CZ connection were involved.

ICN is my suggested back up plan for the op, but utilizing the sfo-wuh flight is even better. Flying Delta to Shanghai should be an option of the last resort.

The only problem I see with WUH-SFO for the return is that CZ's unaccompanied minor policy stipulates no connections, so presumably someone would have to pick up the 9-year-old at SFO (the 14-year-old wouldn't qualify as a UM at all). Absent the UM issue, this is obviously the better choice.

KE's policy doesn't seem to have any such restrictions.

Thanks again for the many good suggestions, which have been helpful to me in deciding my course of action. Right now I wish to avoid non-Chinese or non-American airports because if anything goes wrong in, for instance, Korea, I have no contacts to assist me in resolving the problem. Also, right now my preference is to take the bullet train from Shanghai to Wuhan as a matter of simplicity so that coming and going flights will be the same.

Shanghai to Wuhan (by train) is arguably simple during the outbound portion of your trip in which you are with your kids (e.g. book hotel and train for next day).

But, on the return journey (when you are not with your kids), there is significant potential for things to go wrong. While I don't think this is an impossible to overcome obstacle (e.g. trains are almost always on time, and transportation between SHA and PVG is straight forward enough for you to put a viable plan in place), if you didn't have to deal with it, things would be simpler/easier.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I encourage you to try to your best to nail down the SFO-WUH nonstop flight as an option (and investigate DL's unaccompanied minor policy on the SFO-CVG leg). If this works, then go with it; the PVG-SHA-WUH (and vv) drill is bound to set you back $600 anyway.

Moondog: "But, on the return journey (when you are not with your kids), there is significant potential for things to go wrong."

This is what we did 2 years ago and why I feel comfortable with this potential itinerary. Our Chinese relatives just arrived a day ahead of time. Am intrigued by SFO to Wuhan though.