moondog

Have any of you guys heard updates on the proposed PVG alternate(s) (for arrivals)? I'm guessing HGH, NKG, or NBO, but apparently, ~9 other airports are also being considered.

*Edited to change NNG (obviously impossible) to NKG.

narvik

I'd like to know this too. Supposed to start March 17?

kb1992

It's going to be tough for other airports to replace PVG.

Local officials are scared of imported COVID. They would be fired if lot of cases show up.

Besides, other cities may not have enough quality quarantine hotels.

If they are not careful, infections would spread (a.k.a. recent Hua Ting Hotel in Shanghai).

moondog

i am guessing they will go with more than one city and that PVG will keep some flights. Since this is a central government initiative, the opinions of local officials probably don't matter much. Do you think they asked Tianjin if it wanted to accept flights that would otherwise go to Beijing?

kb1992

Yeah I can understand Beijing where the emperor lives.

But Shanghai is different. Other cities could refuse.

moondog

TMK, CAAC itself is calling the shots here, so it might as well be Beijing.

As an aside, I've been pondering (and reading various WeChat accounts about) why they want to do this. The only two theories that seem somewhat plausible to me so far are: 1. to better protect Shanghai; and 2. to relieve pressure on q hotel capacity.

#1 doesn't make a great deal of sense to me because, presumably, the affected passengers who wanted to go to Shanghai would still make their way anyway after their quarantines are finished. Let's say they go with, Wuxi, for example; that's not much further from Central Shanghai than PVG.

My issue with #2 is that the number of incoming passengers has remained more or less constant for the past year and I haven't heard of any hotel availability crisis situations yet. If they were to increase capacity in a material manner, I could envision issues. However, I've seen no indications that this is in the works.

But, another way to max out q hotel rooms would be to increase the duration of the quarantine (e.g. going from 14 days to 28 days would presumably double the demand). This is something that I could see happening.

Your thoughts?

kb1992

Shanghai never ran out of Q hotels in the past two years. Positive cases for international arrivals usually were 10-20 cases at most.

1) However, positive cases from HK arrivals reached hundreds. This runs out of Q hotels quickly.

2) Recent increase of additional 7 days for people who have no apartment to stay in Shanghai certainly contributes to Q hotel issue.

IMHO, 14 days are already excessive. Now 21? That's borderline insane. Of course the whole population is paranoid No.1 in the world about COVID.

They have not shut down HK flights. Do people realize why?

gudugan

No, I'm dumb. Why not?
If they were serious about covid zero they would have shut down all flights from HK and closed the land border.

moondog

Whether you test positive or negative on arrival, you are still accounted for in the Q hotel numbers...but, might end up going to a hospital in the case of positive. There is no increased demand for Q hotels.

The +7 definitely isn't "recent".

Why on earth would they shut down HK flights before flights from other countries? HK is definitely more important than NY or London for most companies here.

kb1992

When positive cases go up so high, don't you suspect that numbers of daily arrival pax from HK also go up significantly? Or how do you explain additional demand for Shanghai Q hotels?

Also, close contacts of positive cases might be subject to additional Q days.

Oh, +7 days in Q hotels for people staying in Shanghai but don't have own property is definitely recent. Last month?

Yes they have shut down every international flight with 5+ positive cases. Yet they have not shut down HK flights. We are not debating they should shut down HK flights before other international flights. We are talking about shutting all other int'l flights with small positive cases but allow HK flights to continue with huge positive cases.

With hundreds of positive cases from HK arrivals, it's almost like they are inviting imported cases from HK.

COVID is No.1 priority in the Kingdom. But why on the earth they are letting so many positive cases come from HK? They shut down Yun Nan border in a day.

Folks, please think hard.

gudugan

Can you please just say what your theory is clearly?

My dumb optimistic theory is still here:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34003232-post1367.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34032001-post53.html (I guess 1 and 2 were wrong, but the point is HK is the scapegoat and the narrative will start to shift).

The mainland government has no clue how to actually deal with any case numbers >1000, so it's also possible they're just doing random things and the optimistic theory becomes true not out of policy/narrative shifting but out of necessity.

moondog

I am not sure how to explain the increase in demand for q hotels (if there has been one yet), but there is no correlation between positive cases and demand.

If they are Shanghai residents, they do q in their own houses. To date, q hotels are only used for PVG arrivals and, in some cases, people visiting from other cities within China.

This policy has been in place since at least last October when I arrived.

I don't have access to data on the HK flights, but even if they are being let in with less scrutiny than others, I can't imagine this moves the needle a great deal. I might be wrong, though.

STS-134

HK was reporting ~55k cases/day recently. HK has a population that is 44x less than that of the US. In other words, HK's per capita case rate was equivalent to ~2.4M cases/day in the US -- a milestone that the US has never actually reached. And pretty much all flights from the US were shut down during the big omicron wave in December/January. So if they haven't shut down HK flights, that suggests that something other than keeping SARS-CoV-2 out is motivating this policy.

kb1992

The policy that people don't have own place but want to stay in Shanghai MUST go to Q hotels for additional 7 days took effect January 24, 2022.

http://m.sh.bendibao.com/news/241986.html?src=sogou

Before that they can stay at any hotel (not Q hotel) and move freely, with additional tests.

This is definitely recent, not October 2021 as you claimed.

The Kingdom treats HK so nicely, even though technically HK is considered "international arrival"

Just compare how China enforces COVID rules for US vs HK. Huge, huge difference. At this point, every pax from the US must pass 4 different PCR/Anti-gen tests on day 1, 5, 6 before they can board the flight.

How many tests HK pax take before flying to PVG?

gudugan

Well there are definitely differences at least at an ideological level.

• The mainland is trying to do a big show of “saving” Hong Kong. Hence why Liang Wannian is there now and is calling the shots.
• In the mainland’s view, HK is part of China so it’s not so much “international”.
• In the mainland’s view, they don’t care about foreigners. And Chinese people in countries outside of the mainland/HK/Macau/Taiwan are making a mistake being there instead of the safe place that is the mainland. Now HK is unsafe so their citizens should be able to return to the safe place again if they do the right precautions. Unfortunately at some point these precautions failed.