I am trying to setup a flight from the east coast to PEK departing the first week of August 8/1 to 8/5; and returning between 8/15 and 8/20.

Currently I can book a direct flight from EWR to PEK (on CO), coach for $1800, BF is currently completely sold out for that week so there is no option for upgrade or purchasing a BF ticket.

There is some upgrade availability on DL flight from ATL to NRT during that time frame. It books out at $1600 in an upgradeable class, and would require miles to do so.

I would prefer to take the DL option and then some how fly from NRT to PEK. I was looking at pricing for NRT to PEK and coach class fare was running around $900-$1000 round trip for that leg.

Can anyone suggest a good routing for the NRT-PEK leg to lower the cost, even if it's an unusual routing? I am not sure if the high fare is just typical for any flight into PEK or if it is just the NRT-PEK direct flights.

Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

There are no low cost intra-Asia fares from NRT. If you cannot include this leg without stopover in a single ticket (and it's likely Delta has some arrangement with some carrier so you can), then you are stuck with absurd fare levels from NRT.

Consolidators exist in Japan but typically you have to buy and pay for the ticket in the country by going to the consolidator's office some time in advance. Even then, the price for this 3-4 hour flight is still very high.

Thanks for the reply.

Is there another market that I could fly to from NRT and then connect to PEK? Like NRT-SIN-PEK or some example of that.

I asked Delta if they could book NRT to PEK but they said they could not

gee i can't understand what the price problem could be. I mean all that's going on in beijing from aug. 8 to 24 is some little summer olympics event

forget upgrades. you aren't likely to find upgrade availability at all at that time

SIN is way out of the way, an extra 6-7 hours in the air and a ground transfer. Might be marginally cheaper from Seoul, but you are getting into real details here. If you are flying NW, I guess you could go on to HKG and back to PEK, but you do wonder if this kind of doubling back is worth the effort! On DL, well, DL isn't exactly a powerhouse in Asia so there aren't so many options.

united flies non stop from iad to pek. But getting a cheap fare during the olympics is going to be next to impossible.

If I were going I'd look at the alternative of flying into shanghai and taking the overnight train to beijing. Another alternative is taipei.

Taipei is NOT a viable or good alternative. You need to fly from Taipei to Cheju Island or Seoul, then onto Beijing, or to HK or Macau, then onto Beijing.

Better alternatives are either HK or Incheon Korea.

sorry i had seen but not looked closely at stories about flights starting from taipei to china. I now see it's about charter flights that are running over the new year holiday, not regular passenger flights

Trying to get a decent price during the Olympic games
is as impossible as flying beginning of next month, during
Chinese New Year. Time to change your travel plans,
hopefully you can be flexible.

I apologize if I came off as if I am trying to find "cheap" airfare to Beijing during the OLYMPICS. I do know that the price is going to be quite high - although $1800 r/t EWR-PEK is a really reasonable price for the time frame.

My intent with the post was to get possibilities to upgrade from coach to fly the segments in Biz or 1st.

Any time to fly to PEK or otherwise in Biz or 1st is an astronomical amount of money 10k+, regardless of the Olympics.

The CO fare for 1800 is upgradeable with mileage (if there was availability - and there is not). The DL flight is $1700 to NRT and is upgradeable and the segment on NW NRT to PEK is $1000 in coach. So that's $2700 - not that bad - but I was looking for alternatives......

I quickly checked NW.com around your time frame,
couldn't find anything from NYC but found flights
out of ATL or IAD to PEK around $ 2100 upgradeable
with 60k miles to biz and there was availability (Aug 5/6
-Aug 18 or 21 ) Other eastcoast airport could be available.
Just a suggestion. I don't know which FF program you
belong to, but if you have DL miles, they surely can pull
up these flights and apply your mileage to it. In any case,
maybe a little more search will return some good results.
Seems I misunderstood about the Olympics, it is a tough
time, though, to find upgrades. Good luck.