Huh, I tried doing a few dummy bookings from North America to Shanghai and the lowest fare bucket I could get was T. Maybe the even lower ones are reserved for intra-Asia or other routes.

I would as well - but for different reasons. I just booked an award on MU on their A330. Seems that those were also recently refurb'd to full flats in J. Still a 2-2-2 layout, but that's just fine (sometimes better, actually) when travelling with a companion, IMO.

The lowest available and the lowest in existence are not necessarily the same.

SIN - PVG - JFK (Class Q at SGD 614.00)

MU566
23:25 Mar.12 (SINGAPORE)
04:55 Mar.13 (Shanghai Pu Dong Airport)

MU587
11:30 Mar.13 (Shanghai Pu Dong Airport)
14:25 Mar.13 (NEW YORK JOHN F KENNEDY)

i travel on china eastern quite often within china. regardless of this new group 1 deal, it is not fun flying in and out of shanghai as flights are often delayed. i flew their 777 a couple of time. the service was extremely friend but the food was blah. the seat wasn't clean though...

I'd rather leave SIN at midnight than 6 am. That was one advantage of the KE connection through ICN, although it did mean lots of time in the KE lounge at ICN, which isn't such a bad thing.

From https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...-eastern.html:

Q does not appear in the table.

Am I correct in assuming that if I book JFK-PVG in business directly with MU that I can get full mileage but without the medallion bonus?

Are you talking about redeemable miles? You will receive a Medallion bonus on the base miles as noted in footnote 4:

(4) Medallion Mileage Bonus is based on Base Miles earned: Diamond - 120%; Platinum - 80%; Gold - 60%; Silver - 40%

You will also receive a class of service bonus on the base miles for business class (75 - 100%).

I don't think this is right. When DL moved to revenue based earning of miles, the class of service bonus was eliminated. As a DM, I get 11 miles per dollar for D1, FC, and coach tickets equally (plus the RDMs for buying tickets with a DL AmEx card).

We still get the class of service bonus on MQMs, namely 150% for DL flights ticketed in B Y G A P Z I D, with 200% for FULL F and FULL J/C.

This is for non 006 tickets?

Anyone else find it odd that an international first-class (P) ticket on China Eastern only receives a MQM bonus of 150% while a business-class (J) ticket receives a MQM bonus of 200%?

When booking directly with a partner using their codes and ticket stock, RDM, MQM, and MQD are all based on a percentage of miles flown, with various medallion and class of service bonuses.

MU appears to have 3 First Class buckets: U/F/P. U earns 200%, so I'm guessing that's the full fare bucket. Only business (J) earns 200%, the other business buckets (C,D,I) earn 150%.

So not odd, and in fact the same as for AF, where P and J earn 200% but F,C,D,I,Z earn 150%.

For what it's worth, the purser on my flight out of NRT and I were talking about how great the ground staff are in NRT. (This is the third time I've had him in the last week or so.) He told me Delta is continuing to eliminate jobs at NRT. He also said many of the Detroit-based crew are worried because they think Delta will start to also eliminate Asian flights out of Detroit as it shifts to Seattle and probably makes Shanghai a hub with China Eastern like Amsterdam is with KLM.

I think those Detroit have nothing to fear. It doesn't make any sense (financial or otherwise) for DL to send route East Coast to Asia passengers thru Seattle. DL needs 2 Asian gateways, one for the Eastern US and one for the West.

Routing someone from Boston thru Seattle to Asia is silly. Routing someone from San Francisco thru Detroit to Asia is silly.