Tag Archives for china.
A flight from Beijing to Chengdu was delayed by three hours as a passenger demanded an upgrade. He’d purchased two business class seats and one in economy for his family, and believed he was entitled to a free upgrade once on board.
The Foshan Shadi airport, located near Guangzhou and Shenzhen, recently gained notoriety on Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo for being dubbed “the most ghetto airport in China,” with features like handwritten flight information and lack of gender-separated toilets. Despite its reputation, the airport, which serves as a secondary hub for China United Airlines, offers incredibly low flight prices, with tickets to Inner Mongolia priced as low as ¥10 ($1.37).
Chen Siming, regularly jailed in China for commemorating his country’s 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, managed to leave his country in July and turned up this weekend in the transit area of Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport seeking refuge from persecution.
A week ago United Airlines made an announcement about its flights to China that is not true. They said they would add 10 weekly flights between the U.S. and China. They will not do so.
Delta announced that it would add six weekly flights between the U.S. and China. It probably won’t do this either.
Footage from Chinese social media shows an airline passenger melting down earlier this year. He said he was caught in a “time loop” – this was his sixth cycle through. The flight already crashed, everyone died, but he’s returned to this point and was warning everyone. He said they were destined for the same fate as Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The U.S. government is warning Americans not to travel to China over laws and practice there allowing for arbitrary detention for political reasons, and for prosecution over the contents of private emails.
New legislation went into effect July 1 allowing the government to take even greater steps. But what about Hong Kong? And transit through the airport there?
Lionel Messi, captain of the Argentina national football team and the world’s second highest paid athlete earning $130 million last year, flew into Beijing on a private jet. And was taken into custody.
This month the number of non-stop commercial flights between the U.S. and China totals 48. That’s not per day, across all airlines. That’s for the entire month, according to schedule data from Cirium Diio Mi.
Now that China is re-opening to travel starting January 8, the U.S. is is imposing testing requirements on arrivals from China, Hong Kong and Macau – effective January 5.
Note that travel and testing requirements have done nothing to protect the U.S. in the first three years of the pandemic. They were didn’t keep out Covid, its surgest, or its variants.
China opens its borders, and welcomes visitors again, starting January 8. The only remaining Covid-era requirement will be to show a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours. That’s a wrap on Zero Covid, even for foreigners who were often blamed by China even though the virus almost certainly originated in or near Wuhan.
The country no longer pursues zero Covid, they just pursue a policy of no longer reporting most Covid cases.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
