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Originally Posted by WhoIam
I took a similar trip last December. Airline obviously sucks as far as seat size and customer service, don't know how much this matters to you. The one thing it has going for it is that the seats in coach have electrical outlets in the back. If your's works you can watch your own movies or just dick around on your computer for the whole trip.
You don't need any kind of Chinese visa. Even if you miss your connecting flight, you'll get some special 24 hr visa and be put up in a hotel. The thing that sucks about China is they make you go through customs into the airport and the go back through customs again to get back to the international terminal. This wasn't that bad in Shanghai but it probably depends on how busy they are and whether you forgot you were wearing your "Free Tibet" t-shirt.
I signed up for their frequent flyer program and only got miles from the BKK-Shanghai leg of the trip. I'll try to fix this if I'm unfortunate enough to be in a Chinese airport again. They seemed to remember my preference for a window seat and I was assigned one for all 4 of my flights.
One thing to keep in mind for your layover is that at least in Shanghai and Beijing there's something like an automatic $10 fee to exchange money at every place in the airport. This is terrible if you just want to change $10 or $20 to get a sandwich and some beer.
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I've flown them. It's a ****ty airline but whatever, it's fine. You won't need a transit visa.
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Originally Posted by BlackRain
Search around a bit for a flight with EVA Air (Taiwan), they can be found, just have to check several different days. I took it from Vancouver for $650, 19h total with a 4 hour layover in Taipei. Have not flown the Chinese airlines but have not heard good things.
Thanks guys. Ya I'm not too worried about uncomfortable seats or crappy customer service (got a bottle of temazepam for that). As long as I get there and they don't lose my luggage. I'm worried more about hidden costs, like excessive excess baggage fees/ect and issues with huge delays/cancelled flights/missed connecting flights ect.
I've had to do that going through customs at the connecting flight before many times. Montreal to Cancun is like that at Miami airport.
That's a useful tip about the China airport conversions. I'm already going to a forex broker in Canada to get baht, so I'll just grab some Yuan while I'm there, enough for us to have what we want while we're waiting 6hr.