West coast to China fare just jumped $500 over night
 

For the month of Sep. & Oct., West coast to China fare just jumped $500 over night (yesterday around $950, today everything is over $1450). Just checked there are plenty of K & T available. Any idea why? Is it likely to come down anytime soon?

There must be some fare wars or something going on. I was booking a few trips for later in the year earlier this week and was please to see that on AA (ORD-PVG) my flights had dropped from the ~$2300 I had budgeted to $737 ($899 AI) r/t. Oddly, early 2009 flights I priced a few weeks ago were up >$1000. Needless to say I'm waiting on those.

ex-CN fares do move around quite a bit IMHO, but I've never seen moves this dramatic.

Try Consolidators.....
 

As a lot of asia booking often come from consolidators (whom have pre-blocked seats several months in advance), I would try to check their fares to see how comparable it is to nwa.com. More frequently, consolidators fares are 20 to 70% less for the same flights.

Jiburi

A competitor that was depressing prices probably sold out or raised its fares.

Prices will come down if a competitor offers a better deal or (sometimes) if NW thinks it might fly with too many empty seats.

Don't know if this will help you, but I had similar issues, but with a South Korea ticket. I originally booked a ticket for $1347 from YYC to ICN (a decent fare), but then took advantage of the Customers First policy and cancelled that one when I found I could do a stopover in NRT for a few days. When I checked on the stopover before, it was pricing out to the $2000's, but now, I could do it for a mere $1417 (basically the same $1347 ticket plus the Japanese landing/departure taxes).

Anyways, long story short, I was figuring out which flight to take, how many days to stay in Tokyo, etc, and all of a sudden, I resubmitted my search back to the one i had chosen ($1417) and it priced at a whopping $2565

ITA showed $1417, and I could still book it on Expedia for the lower price, but NWA would not budge. Every possible combination I tried gave me prices in the $2000's.

For the heck of it, I changed my inbound flight back home from ICN to PUS, and this seemed to do the trick - it priced out at $1410 or so.

You might want to play around with alternate dates and nearby airports, in my case, PUS was a life saver.

NW seems it's competing with HU (Hainan Airline, China) on the west coast to CN.

HU has good deals on all over west coast to China,

XXX (west coast) via SEA (AS service) via PEK to interior CN

Thanks for all the advices, the price just dropped back to the original level.

China's new visa restrictions are at least in part to blame.

For example, UA's award availabilty going to PEK has opened up for the days before the Olympics, both ex-IAD and ORD. Return availability hasn't at this point but it could still be done via NRT/ICN on CA/OZ/NH assuming they have slots.