Tag Archives for shanghai.
American Express is opening a new lounge at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport that has not been publicly announced, with travelers spotting “American Express Lounge Coming Soon” signage in the terminal. The location is especially notable because it appears to be at Hongqiao rather than Pudong, pointing to a strategy focused on premium short-haul business traffic in China rather than primarly international travelers – or Americans.
This filing by Alaska certainly suggests Seattle – Shanghai is at least still alive, and hints by American to employees in March that they could fly Seattle to Singapore suggest that they’re still working on a strategy that could come to fruition for Seattle-based Asia flying, perhaps when the new Boeing 787-9s that American has on order begin to deliver.
Knowing what kind of response to expect from the Chinese government, people react with chaos when news of fresh cases nearby breaks out. On Sunday night Shanghai Pudong airport “descended into chaos” after two cargo handlers there tested positive for Covid-19. Hundreds of flights were cancelled.
Authorities set up a testing site at the airport and ordered all airport cargo employees to be tested. Although passengers reportedly understood and feared that everyone was going to be tested and quarantined. That may have been the initial plan, scaled back as riots were feared.
Before the global pandemic, Apple was United’s largest corporate customer spending $150 million with the airline. Unsurprisingly United’s San Francisco hub captures a large amount of Northern California tech business, and Apple is one of the biggest spenders on travel.
With significant suppliers and manufacturing in China, Apple had been booking one quarter of total company spend on just the San Francisco – Shanghai route, a total of 50 business class seats a day.
China appears to have their coronavirus outbreak largely under control. However they’re now encouraging – even subsidizing – a return of international flights. I’ve worried that they would bring back infected passengers.
Naturally they’ve thought through this problem, and with the current low volume of international flying they are examining each passenger entering the country. Even at the current low volume of international travel to China, though, that’s backing up arriving flights by several hours in some cases. And that can cause unruly passengers.
If you’ve never missed a flight you’re spending too much time in airports. Non-stops are nearly always better than connecting, though on the longest flights the time a connection adds to your overall journey is relatively smaller (if everything goes as planned).
Passengers prefer non-stop travel over connections, but at what margin? How much are people willing to spend to avoid a connection and does it depend on how long of a connection they’d have to take?
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 »
