Yes, NH/JL NRT-PVG fares are insane now.

However, as JL just announced an additional 50 weekly flights to China, I expect Japan-China fares to drop significantly.

Y on OZ can't be upgraded to business class. Same for CX or BR.

On NH, only expensive coach fare can use UA PP to upgrade.

So it must be UA segment over the water.

Book separate tickets then? This looks like a weird UA mispricing. First ticket on OZ is $322 economy, long haul on UA is $1010 economy, $5497 business

Exactly. Book two tickets. The layover at ICN is 2 hours. I hope that OZ would allow bags checked all the way to SFO.

OZ PVG-ICN J Class $573
OZ flight operates 747 for this so it would be nice to see 747 again!
Will find a seat in the upper deck. The last time I saw 747 was like 7-8 years ago on LH BOS-FRA.

UA ICN-SFO-BOS W Class $1,087 then upgrade to J using 40 PP.

Total: $1,658 in J for all segments except SFO-BOS which I might take the buy up offer (around $500).

Options on UA PVG-SFO-BOS: W Class $2,700 Premium Y $5,600 Business Class $23,000

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e82028f4b2.jpg


Insane!!!!

That business class fare is a steal! A one plate meal and all the instant noodles you can eat during the flight all for the price of a Toyota Corolla!

Yep.

Added bonus: you almost make 1K with a single ticket. :rolleyes:

I have a saver economy ticket for PVG-SFO-IAD-ORF. The buyup offer for PVG-SfO flight is more that the ticket price for PVG-ORF in Polaris business. Basically, my 35K miles have negative values 😂😂 if I take the offer. Nah!

Did you call 1K line to get 35K XN ticket issued?

IME, UA wants 120K miles even though XN9.

The behavior of United treating customer buying a seat on 857/858 is shameful.

I booked my tickets on United web in Feb. 2022, long before United disallowed booking of PVG-US XN fare for 35K.
United is also shameful in blocking all mileage award tickets to China. For example, you can book Chinese cities to ICN and TOK, but not the other way. This made me think that I should file a DOT complaint, as mentioned, upthread. If you want to book US-PVG or PVG-US, you cannot get any award ticket from any other *A carriers. United wants us to pay the outrageous prices (e.g., 700K for one-way business ticket). :( :(

Tmk, the DOT doesn't regulate loyalty companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/u...s-ukraine.html

I'm betting this is why China-US flights have not recovered to pre-COVID levels. This directly impacts longer flights to EWR, DFW, DTW, etc. Chinese airlines have applied for additional routes and they have not been approved.

Can't read the article, but this is not new news, AFAICT, this has been going on for weeks and weeks now. Lots of (failed) discussions and finger pointing about this has been happening.

I thought the main sticking point was that the pre-Covid bilateral sets caps on the total number of flights that can be operated by either side and the US wants to renegotiate this to reflect actual numbers (rather than give China carte blanche to ratchet things back up to ~50 flights before the US carriers are ready to play ball).

Isn't that the same thing? The US carriers aren't ready to play ball because they can't sustain long routes from the east coast.

TMK, the Russia overflight sidebar is a more recent development, but I'd like to think that playing field could be leveled fairly easily (e.g. MU might not make quite as much bottom-line money if they don't overfly Russia, but passengers can certainly endure several additional hours westbound only).

DL isn't ready to play ball because they are short on widebody planes/crew.

AA isn't ready to play ball because it really doesn't have much to offer apart from DFW.

If UA doesn't want to dive back into the NYC-China market, they have other options, such as more SFO-PVG and SFO-PEK.

The spirit and letter of the various agreements between the US and China is that each country will operate the same number of flights per week. The big 3 US airlines don't have any widebody aircraft sitting around waiting for these routes to resume. The big 3 Chinese airlines do, but for each 10 weekly flights China adds (just an example) the US airlines will have to add 10 or DOT does not approve the Chinese flights. If China had unsuspended visas for US and Canadian passports two months ago we would probably be in a much better position in terms of total flights being operated. But they did not and the US airlines are less interested having allocated their aircraft elsewhere. In a nutshell.

Keep in mind until the visas were unsuspended a very large majority of travelers were Chinese passport holders who could travel freely into China. And they generally prefer their own airlines just like we see in any other country, Not attractive to DL with no spare widebodies and very unattractive to AA with no real base in and no partners in their alliance. Since then the new wrinkle is A4A asking that all flights into the US avoid Russian airspace, not just Western airlines. I think this is logical but difficult to implement because air services agreement don't address this type of situation or its possibility.

It is currently a mess, you need a lot of parties to agree in a coordinated fashion. Worse than herding kittens into a basket.