A Horrendous China Eastern Experience to Shanghai
 

As a frequent MU flyer, I think you and I must have vastly different meanings of horrendous. This sounds like a normal flight to me, on time, a decent meal and friendly service.

I too fail to see why (other than the queue for check-in) any of this was ‘horrendous’ :confused:

I would take this flight over my recent EWR experience 10/10 times without doubt

Nice trip report, but I don't think you know what the word horrendous means. The only issue seams to be the long check-in line. Other than that, seams like a great flight.

I find it very funny that you're questioning his language skills.

I find it funny that you can't see the difference between a minor spelling mistake and the gross misuse of a word that is used in a pivotal way in the poster's title. But you do you.

Aside from the melodrama, I do appreciate the trip report. It's interesting to see how travel between Hong Kong and China is post-Covid.

I know what horrendous means, when the airline's website doesn't work, errors arise but it doesn't say what the problem is, all the way to trying to get a boarding pass with 4 flights of irritated people shouting they'll imminently miss their flights, me included.

Sure, the experience on board was fine, and the infamous delays that once plagued China's skies are now gone, but it was a miracle I was able to get on the plane in the first place, and I'm a very experienced traveller who got to the airport quite early for this trip. It definitely wasn't a business as usual many people are flying again so it's crowded issue. The awful ground experience is due to the airline shutting off its technology and forcing a thousand people departing within a short time span to get a piece of paper each. It was entirely preventable, and I haven't flown with another major airline in recent memory where there is no online check-in whatsoever.

Eh, MU website has never really worked. This is not new.

​​​​​​Yep, this is like a Wednesday at EWR. Pretty typical stuff.

Oh yeah, today is Wednesday!

From the title, I was expecting to read that the wing fell off prior to landing....

Appreciate the trip report, but yikes, change the title! For MU, this sounds like a pretty decent flight

Not being able to checkin online is my everyday experience in UK and Europe airport as a non citizens.

What airlines have you been flying? I've flown BA, LH, and LX into, out of, and within Europe and online check-in was always available. Not an issue even with budget airlines like Ryanair and easyJet either. The last time I couldn't do anything online was probably a decade ago with Air Koryo or in Myanmar. It's been a while.

I know the bar is pretty low for mainland carriers, but what's not been working right for a long time doesn't make it right or OK now, or less horrible. Otherwise, airlines scoring historically and consistently low in ratings would be superb now?

The experience sounds better than pretty much any airline in the US. You even got a nice meal.

What is there to complain about, with the exception for minor website glitches?

Besides the QR code scanning process is a little pain in the a**. Overall, it's a normal flight experience with Asian airlines.

The US is a pretty low bar to begin with, and even with that, I've never had to wait 90 minutes in line to get a paper boarding pass despite being hand-carry only. This wasn't to get through security.

Which US airline turned off getting checked in online with a mobile pass or something to show electronically to get on board? It's not a minor glitch. They turned off the functionality entirely.

After that anxiety attack waiting for the check-in counter, luckily the flight was normal. A hot meal is quite typical in this part of the world even for a 2 hour flight. I've had 1 hour hops with a hot rice plucked in front of me.

This (bolded), alone = great inbound international flight IMO.

Great trip report. I wouldn't say it was that bad, it could have been much worse I think. But I'm sorry you didn't quite enjoy it. I understand your disappointment. I have had some similar experiences at airports in the past and I know I wouldn't want that to happen again. I hope besides the airport experience, you liked your trip. I'm thinking about going there next year and I would appreciate any tips. I wouldn't really mind it if the airport was crowded, but I'd like the trip itself to be enjoyable.

I suppose things will change a lot by this time next year hopefully, but so far a few months into China's re-opening, there aren't many foreign tourists around. Life on the ground has gotten back to normal though. There are heaps of domestic tourists and Shanghai was buzzing with crowds. So even though international tourism is still in a depression, the tourist sights are not empty at all. Locals have a lot of trouble finding airplane seats out of the country for vacation, so they're still touring within China.

I tried both of Shanghai's airports on this trip and their international sections were deserted. Flights are still nowhere near prepandemic levels so going through immigration and security were a breeze. I'll post another trip report on my outbound flight where I pretty much had the entire Pudong new satellite terminal to myself.

There are still some administrative hurdles such as applying for the health QR code for both arriving and leaving China, while some cities have also sampled inbound arrivals for COVID tests. On this trip in particular, the choice of airline proved the most important consideration. It's something I could control whereas the airport arrival experience I need to take it as is.

You're greatly overstating the complexity of this drill. After you use the miniprogram (or app, or website) once, your profile information is saved so you only have to input your new entry/exit details (e.g. date, flight number, seat) every time thereafter.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...84815b817d.jpg

Getting a foreigner to set up WeChat and Alipay with an overseas credit card for the first time would be a lot more complex than an administrative hurdle, which they will need to do anyway to pay for their meals, book attraction tickets, and pretty much survive during their time in China.

I suppose it would be more useful if I put this stuff in the one of the China forum threads, but since I'm here.

There are 5 ways to complete the health declaration, and the first 4 are interconnected (i.e. you can access your profile from any of them)

1. Website
https://htdecl.chinaport.gov.cn

2.WeChat mp
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e2400d2abd.png

3. Native apps
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...88b0cafdaa.png
4. Kiosk (that looks sort of like an ATM) at checkpoint; I had to use a kiosk once upon entry because the scanner rejected my QR code, but this only cost me an extra 60 seconds

5. Paper form (I believe their law requires them to make these available for people that aren't into technology)

#2 is the most popular method.

What would be more horrendous?
1. Zero OLCI (the case here)
2. Zero catering (anywhere in the world)
3. More than 30-60 minutes from plane departure to landslide after an international flight and with zero checked bags (for this TR, only 30 min!)

ngl as I buy my own airport catering and I’ve never actually flown internationally without carryon. The airport experience for getting onto the plane in this TR reminds me of my wife’s challenge for cuba > Mia at the airport. Mega queue and fears of missing the flight.

I’m so addicted to OLCI & curbside (luggage) that I would also freak out if OLCI wasn’t available and I had to arrive hours before the flight only to see this nonsense. I can see why one would call this horrendous even though I still assumed worse.

Excellent question:tu: Like you, I think 2 is trivial in comparison to 1 and 3,...provided we are talking about ~2-hour flights (I still harbor bad feelings against AC for failing to provide more than ~750 calories to me on PVG-(ICN)-YYZ-MCO last year).

And, I'd encourage you to rephrase 3 to reflect the reality of Shanghai international arrivals (i.e. let's assume that both 1 and 3 are 2 hour time sucks).

I suppose I do think 1 is "more horrendous", simply because it entails an anxiety component that 3 lacks. However, I have regrettably pre-conditioned myself to be ready for 1 (e.g. I now get to JAX 2 hours before every single flight because the TSA there has managed to secure a "horrendous++" rating in my book). But, in the OP's case, managing to escape from SHA 90 minutes faster than (mentally) allocated would have gone a long way towards counterbalancing 1.

Ngl I definitely imagined a false-positive Covid test or some other horrible experience that lasted for days. Just days of being inconvenienced. We should all remember one FTer who had a RTW type trip in 2021 including Mongolia. For a simple connection in ICN he tested positive and received Covid treatment in a hotel; I still don’t know if they served good bancha in the hotel. Meals were conveniently brought to his hotel room. Sarcasm of course since he was quarantined in the hotel room. That to me would also be horrendous.

for all the MU tech fiasco, it sounds like the staff made big efforts to take care of pax who had true risk of missing flights. Doesn’t sound like a situation of chatty staffers ignoring the queue as we’ve read about elsewhere in FT. So it doesn’t even sound like there was true risk of missing the flight. Obviously lounge time and plane spotting time was lost. That bites.

guess we know why MU was cheaper at 1200 hkd lol

I apologize if I missed this, but how do you know that the airline shut off its online check in technology? Simply because it wouldn't work for you? Why would it be in their best interest to put more people in line than necessary?

MU honestly doesn't suck anymore:
-their 330s (even the old ones) are a lot more comfortable your typical Delta or United airplane
-good wifi on most flights
-edible food
-nice people
-increasingly competent operations (they are still far from the top of this mountain, but year-on-year progress is demonstrable)

That said, I always aim for KA when flying northbound from HKG, even on A320s...unless they are only offering PVG while MU has Hongqiao too.

I agree with everything except that. Did something change during the pandemic? The last few MU tpac I took, the WiFi was unusable.

If I'm flying HKG-China, my first choice would be CX since I want to use their lounges.

I specifically asked one of the staff helping to manage the queue why we can't do online check-in or kiosk check-in so we don't need to all crowd around the counters. He told me they were all turned off by the airline.

They had 1 counter in that check-in row to manage imminently cut-off departures but even that one had a substantial line since MU had 4 flights leaving within a short 90 minute window. Out of those the 2 Shanghai flights were widebodies, but even an A320 can seat 150 in Y which was why the regular and emergency lines got crazy. Hence, some were screaming for attention worried about the cut-off but when a crowd that big starts getting rowdy, the staff on hand won't be able to handle them despite best efforts.

By the time I got my boarding pass, I was right at that check-in cutoff, and the line snaked around a few more times behind me. So they must've made some exceptions to accept their bags and keep printing boarding passes because we ended up departing full.

I think the ground staff did the best in these circumstances. I'd rather they send workers to the counters to process us than to have them walking around policing the lines and giving empty comforting words to irritated passengers. But as a passenger, I wouldn't assume they would make exceptions to get us through when clearly the clock has run out, and that was where the frantic stress really bit. None of the staff that helped with the line committed to anything, or gave any such reassurances.

I haven't flown them transpac since late 2019 because even their economy fares have been mind numbing, but domestic and regional wifi has been solid recently. And, I always had good experiences with wifi on the JFK flight.

Whilst not exactly 5 star, it doesn't seem all that bad! Flew with China Eastern a number of times back in 2017 and once ended up arriving at my destination 24 hours late with them! Hoping to get back to China next year and I'm looking forward to sampling their C919

Is the Great Firewall enabled on MU flights?

Of course.

How was the rest of the trip? How about the MU return Shanghai > hkg?? OLCI or queue?? :-)

Also no OLCI for the return flight but there were so few international departures out of Pudong so the line for manual check-in was quite short. I'll post that report in a few days in a separate thread.

Next up in this thread are some photos from my Shanghai trip, which is a bit more upbeat than the flight in.

wait a different airport? Didn’t you fly to SHA (??) airport? And you flew out of PVG? I think that’s pudong. I kinda forget. I last flew Sfo>pvg in 2006!

SHA is both the metro code that includes all airports within the Shanghai municipality (similar to WAS, NYC, TYO, QSF, QLA, etc), and the airport code for Hongqiao Airport.

PVG refers to Pudong Airport.

Yes, I flew into Hongqiao and out of Pudong.

With sunny skies and hot weather, my first stop was to Shanghai Tower, the country's tallest building which was still under construction when I last visited. J Hotel sits at the top part of it. It opened in June 2021 with 165 rooms, including 34 suites.

I set my eyes on the hotel's Lobby Lounge at the 101st floor (470m) for a drink to calm my nerves after a heavy day flying in. At first, reception on the ground floor informed me due to the pandemic, the restaurants are only open to residents, but upon my insistence, they checked upstairs for a seat and got me a table.

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Satisfied with my expensive drink, I was keen to see how the old shikumen neighbourhoods have shaped up after a lot of controversy years ago when the demolition crews came calling.

Zhangyuan was named after Zhang Shuhe, a wealthy grains shipper from Wuxi who bought a piece of farmland here in 1882 from a British merchant, Francis Groom. He built a Western-style garden for his mother. After she passed away in 1885, the garden was opened to the public, and saw a number of firsts, including the first lit electric lamp in the country, the first bicycle race, and first outdoor photo booth. It turned into an arts and culture hub for the city.

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Simingcun is located south of Jing'an Temple and was built in the 1930s as a staff dormitory for the Ningpo Commercial and Savings Bank. Unlike other shikumen of the time, it had wider alleys of 5-6m for vehicles to pass.

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European powers forced a number of China's ports to open for foreign trade in the 19th century. Shanghai was one of them, and various concessions were built where foreign residents followed their homeland's laws and lived within their bubbles. The major players of commerce and finance of the time built their grand buildings along the Bund.

For a memorable dinner with the grand view, head up the Three on the Bund, which has a terrace restaurant serving Western dishes.

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Despite the rain, I enjoyed walking along the riverfront promenade to admire the Bund's buildings lit up with smaller crowds.

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More photos on my website : https://www.globalphotos.org/shanghai.htm