Thanks! I joined. I am not a China resident but I have (or should I say HAD) been traveling there for over 30 years (until the pandemic).

Please allow me to expand upon this "low demand" theory:
-it's certainly true that we paid through the nose for UA857 and its counterparts; even 9C BKK-PVG was north of $4000
-give us 10,000 seats per week, and people will snatch them up
-the thing is the number of Apple/supplier employees who are forced to come here is finite
-if you can accommodate them, and double seats, fares will drop; we have already seen this in action (e.g. 857 now costs $3,000 instead of $9,000)
-and, of course, we can now game the system a little bit by trying Korea, Taiwan, and Macau transits; none of these seem pleasant, but their all-in (e.g. factor in 3 hotel nights and jumping through hoops) costs are around $2,000

In short, doubling capacity IS a big deal. Increasing it by a factor of 10 (e.g. 2019 levels) isn't in the cards yet, but we don't require this.

On a tangential note, KMG and TAO are dirt cheap both in and out right now. These are tier 1.5 cities that just happen to have more flights than Shanghai (and, of course, Beijing, which has zero inbound at present).

I just bought my ticket to return to Shanghai. From LA, I'll be spending time in Japan and Taiwan before facing quarantine in Shanghai.

From LA to Japan I used miles for J class on UA. Tokyo to Taipei was $360 in Y, and Taipei to PVG was $250 in Y.

Recent TAO trip report
 

Yep, TAO is viable, and the prices have dropped from their previously craxy levels back in August and September, partly driven by student traffic. But you might want to note the experience that I will share below of a recent visit using the JD432 Beijing Capital airlines flight from LHR to TAO. This flight was restarted in August after a 20 month ban and is currently once a week on a Friday operated by a A332. The ticket was bought via CTrip rather than direct as you can usually get semi-sensible customer service with CTrip verses trying to deal with Beijing Capital direct.

The passenger complied with the Chinese Embassy requirement of 2 PCR tests, and a local lab had a special China service providing the two firsts, the first being sent off to Radnox, and the second being processed by themselves. The green code come through on WeChat approx 1 hour after submitting the test results. At the airport, despite having the green code from the Embassy these tests resulted in a dispute with the Beijing Capital Airline staff at checkin who claimed that the tests were not from their approved laboratories. But the wording on their own requirements on their website were ambigious if you read the English version and it implied that you only had to use their approved labs if arriving into UK and transiting for the onward flight to China, rather than for UK residents departing UK for China. The passenger won the argument about the PCR tests and the checkin staff backed down but they did force the 25kg overweight by 2kg check in bag to have 2kg of its contents removed, which were promptly put into hand luggage and nothing more was said. Other instructions from JD were that you had to wear a FFP2 or better mask whilst on board, and a snowman suit was recommended. The outbound flight was approx 30% full. Onboard they only handed out ambient food packs.

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View onboard at LHR waiting to leave for TAO
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JD432 onboard catering boxes LHR-TAO

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JD432 onboard catering inside boxes LHR-TAO


Upon arrival into TAO Jiadong (new airport) there was a 3 hour wait on the tarmac. The flight had arrived approx 1 hour early but apparently there was a lack of a suitable contingent of snowmen to process the inbound flight. Whilst you can kinda accept the first hour of delay, the next two hours were probably inflicted as a general discouragement.

Once they ahd been allowed off the aircraft, processing in the airport was efficient, more efficient than it had been in the old TAO Luiting airport back in 2020. It appeared that one of the starfish wings of the new airport was segmented off as an international. Having plenty of space in the new terminal obviously helps. The PCR test inflicted here was no longer the scrape your brains out variety which had previously been experienced in late 2020.

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Waiting, waiting, waiting onboard upon arrival at TAO

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Arrivals processing at TAO

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Arrivals processing at TAO

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Arrivals processing at TAO

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Welcome to Qingdao!

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Baggage reclaim

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Local city welcoming committee

The flight passengers were escorted to a bus and then taken to their accomodation. Usually in Qingdao quarantine is performed in some of the local hotels. However flight JD432 was unfortunate.

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Quarantine centre arrival area

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Quarantine centre arrival area

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Quarantine centre arrival area

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Inside the facility - a corridor

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Quarantine centre room

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Quarantine centre room

And that was it for the next 7 days. Comfortable it wasn't, especially the bed which had an especially thin mattress, and many of the co-passengers were complaining about this.
Apparently at least one passenger developed COVID whilst in quarantine was removed from the quarantine centre for 'treatment'.
The TV was a basic IPTV service with some kind of Androidish box behind the screen. You could get some free content and channels but there were many more you could pay for. Wifi was reasonable.
Room rate was RMB120 plus RM80 for food per day. No external food or any deliveries were permitted, no exceptions.
Staff just did the minimum and didn't communicate effectively with the quarantinees to advise them when to expect food, PCR tests, food, PCR, temperature reporting, more PCR, etc.

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Example Quarantine meal service

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Example Quarantine meal service

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Room with a view?

Release from the Quarantine centre was exactly 7 days after the plane's arrival in TAO. Then each passenger had to wait to be collected by the local minders from the respective city district where they were going to move onto for their +3 days of stay at home, and each area city area turned up a varying times into the evening. As I have explained in another posting, the local minders didn't kinda realise that the ground floor flat that was the quarantine location for the passenger I am reporting for had two doors, one fronting the street, and one at the back onto the communal staircase. They put a magnetic lock on the front door but failed to realise there was another door out back....

As it hapened, the passenger needed to extend their stair for an additional week once in China, and this was quick and easy to arrange with CTrip, and actually resulted in a refund as the following week's flight back to London was cheaper. At check-in on the way back, the agent said that whilst the initial flights in August and September had been very busy demand was now reducing and there was going to be around 60 passengers for the flight back to London.

Here are some pics of the TAO airport lounge.

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Qingdao airport international departure lounge

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Not many international flights that day from Qingdao but good links to Korea due to the large number of Korean expats in Qingdao.

The return flight was not eventful and very quiet onboard. There was a hot meal service on the return back to London. The crew were not wearing snowman suits until an hour before arrival.

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A very quiet A332 returning to London

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Onboard meal service JD431

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Onboard meal service JD431

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Snowman suits were worn approaching London

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Snowman suits were worn approaching London

Although I wasn't the passenger I can ask questions if there are any arising. Hope this is useful to someone out there.

Still crossing my fingers that by January my wife and I will be able to transit into Shanghai via Hong Kong.

Thanks for the great report and great pictures!

For the bolded part above: not sure if you did, but I can't stress enough the importance of getting everyone on the bus going to the quarantine hotel/facility to form their own, independent WeChat group.
It's slightly difficult to setup, especially if there's no other foreigners. There's time on the bus to do this, but not everyone will easily be convinced of its benefit, but once in your room, it's too late!
We did not have a community WeChat group during my 2021 quarantine, but did on my recent 2022 quarantine: makes a WORLD of difference, as there's usually at least one person knowledgeable & willing to help with any particular query....not to mention the camaraderie!!!
(I used the built-in WeChat translate feature to read messages, and used another translator program to reply....worked perfectly!)

No problem.

The passenger has been through this process twice now, once in late 2020 (14 days in a hotel), and in the past month. On both occasions there were a few foreigners on the flight and hence the quarantine group. On neither occasion was there an independent WeChat group but the group was used by everyone and there were some messages shared in English both by quarantinees and the minders. But I can imagine it could be useful for those who really struggle with Chinese to have a couple of extra contacts in the group, good call!

Despite having the official WeChat group the minders usually failed to share any useful messages, e.g. Timing of today's PCR test, making sure they don't clash with food service, etc.

Shanghai quarantine
 

I arrived at Shanghai PVG yesterday, on a Lufthansa flight from Germany. From landing to getting on the bus to the hotel was about 3 hours, not so bad, The hotel is originally enough the 'Shanghai Hotel' (Jin Jiang chain), and it has seen much better days. The room itself is fine, clean enough. Lots of food with each meal, lots of rice, but not really great. Costs at 400 room/day + 100 meals/day, so 5000 RMB total up front for 10 days. Visa/other CC but not amex, or cash There is no choice for hotels, they herd you into a waiting area then onto the bus, and off we go.

Its like a video game: scan these codes, pass these tests, get through various bosses, 'fast' travel to somewhere else, then repeat.

Install WeChat on your phone before you arrive, and Alipay if you can. The health code is accessed via Alipay. I could not get this to work with my German SIM card, but no problems with a China SIM bought from amazon before leaving.
They setup a group WeChat for everyone, and you can order food as a 'group buy', once per day.

The room has high ceilings - should've brought my golf clubs or a skipping rope.

That Qingdao experience looks especially painful. Absolutely ridiculous to be making people do this in late 2022.

My friend who travelled to Shanghai was let out of quarantine at JW Marriot Changfeng Park about a week ago. Instead of the Dexter plastic wrap treatment he had some kind of rubber-mat covering the floor.
Like others he had no idea what hotel he would stay in until he stepped of the bus from the airport.
Yesterday he had to change rooms at his new hotel because someone in another room at the same floor had allegedly been in contact with someone else with Covid. To be safe they moved him 4 floors further down... Ridiculous...

My hotel quarantine group started out with only 5 people (myself, 2 from the bus, and 2 I met in the lobby during check-in). We added the hotel concierge on day 3, and this setup was robust enough. The concierge proved to be our most valuable member because she was in charge of getting deliveries to us. For example, beer was fine with her, but not with the 保安, so she told Times Grocery how to properly conceal it, and she also gave them her own phone number in case the couriers were running late. I sent her a nice 红包 on day 13.

I suspect it's not just about optics--Xi is probably genuinely concerned about mRNA vaccines becoming another "chokehold" import that the US can leverage in anti-China containment strategy.

After what happened with semiconductors, China is never going to sole-source anything critical from a US-controlled or US-influenced supplier again as a matter of national security. E.g., Semiconductor export curbs hitting China to be followed by biotech and AI restrictions: US official

If/when China develops a domestic mRNA vaccine, that's when China will clear Pfizer/BioNTech for import, since both sides know if there's a domestic alternative, the US government can't use the foreign vaccine as leverage.

Maybe it’s not about Covid at all and it’s purely an excuse for Chairman Xi to enforce greater control on the population of the PRC. That’s certainly my take on the current situation.

Hehe great 2020 hindsight and also you conveiently forgot about China's vaccine diplomacy...

That's a pretty outlandish claim. Why would the US withhold better vaccines? So that Chinese people can get infected, then spread new variants around, and then have those variants come back into the US and cause another surge? Unlike semiconductors, a lack of vaccines in China has a risk to the public health of the people of the US. There is no motivation for the US to disallow import of vaccines.