So do we have to worry about Chinese driving etiquette infecting airplanes too?! A pilot with Juneyao Airlines (吉祥航空) almost caused a movie-scenario air disaster when he refused to yield the runway at Hongqiao Airport to a Qatar Airways plane on August 13th. The Qatar Airways pilot claimed that he had 'five minutes worth of fuel left.' The plane, traveling from to Shanghai from Doha, requested to land immediately during unfavorable thunderstorm conditions. However, the Chinese pilot refused to yield to orders from air traffic controllers, claiming that he had been waiting a 'long time' and needed to land 'right now'. The Qatar Airways plane eventually landed without incident, only after coming close enough to the Juneyao aircraft to be within collision-range. Meanwhile, spokesmen for Juneyao Airlines aren't buying the whole 'five minutes of fuel left' story. Right, because if anyone's the crazy pilot in the story, it's the nutso who can't even read his fuel gauge. more ›

• Asian airports continue to be awesome: Passengers ranked Shanghai International Hongqiao Airport at 27th among 171 airports worldwide in the most recent survey conducted by the Airport Council International (ACI), upping it two spots from 2010.
• Tired of being stuck in queue with crying babies and rude elbows? Well, sigh no more: Now you can hire a professional to do it for you for around 20 RMB an hour..
• Talks of a taxi fare increase have been circulating around Shanghai for months. Now, they're just trying to decide how to do it. At a public hearing on Monday, the majority of participants preferred adding 1 RMB to the original flag-down fee of 12 RMB, rather than raising the per/km fee from 2.4 RMB to 2.7 RMB after the first 3 km.

Four new stations opened yesterday on Line 10 and all of them have something to do with Hongqiao Airport. So if you're flying out of there and want to transfer between the two terminals, take the subway. Well, except if your flight falls anywhere out of the 6am to 10pm window, that is. Before, after that, you'll have to taxi it. more ›

Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin was one of 150 passengers on yesterday's maiden flight from Taipei's Songshan Airport and Shanghai's Hongqiao airport - the first of what will be regular flights between the two. Although the flight time remains the same (an hour and 45 mins), the route cuts travel time between the cities by an hour (compared to the Pudong-Taoyuan airport connection, which requires extra commute time). From now, 28 flights will operate the route each week. A direct Shanghai-Taipei link has long been resisted for political reasons, but thawing business relations finally made way for the flights. You know what that means - more Expo visitors!
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Starting tomorrow, everyone will be able to ride Line 2 between Shanghai's two airports. Initial service from Guanglan Road Station to the Pudong International Airport Station will last from 9am to 4pm (though they'll increase the hours before the Expo starts). Getting there from Hongqiao Airport will cost 8RMB and take roughly two hours. more ›

• The new terminal at Hongqiao Airport opened yesterday. Fun facts: It cost $2.2 billion, it's four times bigger than the old facility and will be expected to handle 40 million passengers a year by 2015. [AFP]
• Of course, no opening is without its troubles. Thousands of passengers went to wrong departure points yesterday during the debut... some missed flights as a result. [Shanghai Daily]
• Want to read something depressing? The most delicious Shanghai foods... are also some of the fattiest. Terrible. [CNNGo]

The anti-smoking campaigns have begun! Well... at least they've begun in Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport, which just enacted a new smoking ban in all restaurants, toilets, offices and other public spaces inside the terminals. The enforcement is pretty stringent too - any business contaminated with evidence of cigarette smoking, such as the smell of smoke or wayward butts, will be fined upwards of 1000RMB. Now the only place to take a drag will be one of the five specially ventilated smoking rooms after the security check-in. Apparently, you're still allowed to puff away at the Pudong International Airport... for now. Source: Shanghai Daily more ›

File this under the2010 World Expo actually making our lives marginally more convenient, huzzah! more ›

By Cindy Nawilis more ›

Apropos of nothing, the previously scrapped maglev train line that would have linked the Pudong and Hongqiao airports together is suddenly being dusted off again. Construction on the proposed 31.8-km train line was shelved in 2007, after everybody realized that it was a terrible idea. Well, at least we thought everybody realized it was a terrible idea. more ›

Okay, it may be the case that we don't fly enough, but yesterday at the Hongqiao Airport, we were really surprised to see this Virgin bookstore at the departure hall (that Richard Branson has really acted fast, hasn't he?). Does anyone know how long the store has been there? Food and beverage options appear to have widened up quite a bit too. Element Fresh has been there since last summer, located just outside the exit (sorry, no picture there), serving decent food at the same rates as their outlets elsewhere in town. With the competition, travellers are finally getting food that can actually be eaten, and prices also seem to have come down a bit on the average. In the meanwhile, we think the retail experience at Pudong Airport continues to rot away with its portfolio of Chinglish brand apparel stores and cafés that get away with serving bad coffee for RMB50. What do you frequent flyers out there think? more ›

There has been plenty of criticism leveled at the Shanghai subway system, both on Shanghaiist and elsewhere, for things that could be better about it: it closes too early, the interchanges take too long, it's too crowded and too hot/cold, it doesn't reach XXX place, etc. If you fancy yourself on optimistic person, though, you know that one way to change the negatives into positives is to change your complaints into things you're looking forward to. more ›

From Shanghai Daily:

SHANGHAI issued an orange alert for heavy fog this morning. It was the first orange fog warning since winter began early this month. more ›

By Julien Bertrand: On his first official visit to China, French President Nicolas Sarkozy must have been dizzy, witnessing the signing of contracts worth 20 billion euros in total, comprising of 160 Airbus aircrafts, two EPR nuclear reactors (to be built in Taishan, Guangdong, by 2014) and signal equipment for Shanghai’s future 36-kilometer metro line #10, a long-awaited deal between Alstom and Shanghai Metro that will link New Jiangwan Town to Hongqiao Airport. In an... more ›

In other Shanghaiist news, our favourite media blog Danwei has offered your correspondent a very special Toilet Bowl Award as part of their recent Model Worker's Awards for "posting regularly about news that no one else is finding, and translating some of the more interesting stuff on the Chinese Internet". We have also been singled out for our "excellent contribution to the toilet sector, for the posts Shanghai artist's Nike poo, and especially for the video displayed at this page: New bidet that doubles as enema and colon cleanser." We wish we could take all the credit for it but the first story came in as a tip while the second one was a quite a boo-boo on our part. We've actually since unpublished the post (but somehow it still appears), reason being, one of our colleagues already wrote about it earlier this year. Anyhow, we shall graciously accept our toilet bowl and promise to polish it religiously. more ›

Two bits of transportation news from random sources: more ›

We have whined before about the dearth of decent restaurants in Shanghai's airports. Pudong travelers are still better off brown-bagging it, but it seems relief will soon be on the way for domestic travelers: Element Fresh is opening up shop at Hongqiao Airport. From their website: more ›

It was reported this weekend that the much ballyhooed 25-minutes-from-Shanghai-to-Hangzhou maglev train, which was supposed to be fully operational around 2010, has been delayed. Indefinitely. Which makes us ask, how much longer are we going to have to wait to be ushered into the sci-fi utopia of the 21st century that we spent most of the 20th century dreaming about? more ›

This morning, Chinese language news portal 163.com had a great scoop, and revealed the future planning for Shanghai and China's Maglev railway system. more ›

Yesterday, we read with interest a few news stories about the approval of a 15.3 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion) expansion of the Hongqiao Airport. By 2010 (of course) there should be a new runway, a new 250,000 square meter terminal, and access to high-speed trains, inter-city trains and subways all at the airport. This all sounds great: Shanghai's most conveniently located airport gets even more convenient (hopefully they do something about the long taxi lines, too). But nowhere in the stories did we see what we really wanted to see — that Hongqiao would once again start living up to the word "International" that still appears on some of its signs. Ninety-five percent of the time we fly in or out of Shanghai we have to schlep all the way to the fun vacuum that is Pudong International. Shanghaiist would like to start a grassroots civic campaign (China loves those, right?) to make Pudong the city's domestic airport and newly improved Hongqiao the international hub, or at least encourage them to share. Anyone want to sign our petition? more ›

Lots of juicy transportation news today: more ›

The airport was Hongqiao, not Pudong. And, yes, the airline was China Eastern. This happened yesterday afternoon at 2:09, when a Boeing 737-300 was arriving from Qingdao. None of the roughly 100 passengers on board was reported injured in the accident — passengers and luggage were evacuated from the aircraft in around 30 minutes — but Hongqiao Aiport, the city's main hub for domestic flights, was closed and normal operations didn't resume there until 6:45 pm. (And, like most Chinese airports, there is not much to do — or eat — if you have to wait around for a long time.) Some 30 to 40 inbound flights were rerouted to Pudong International Airport during the closure. more ›

Shanghaiist is neither fashionable nor interested in fashion, but we know a good party when we hear of one. Which is why we held on to the three invitations that landed on our desk for the opening of the Giorgio Armani Retrospective at the Shanghai Art Museum, a Giorgio Armani fashion show in the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and a Vogue China after-party at Three on the Bund, all on Saturday night. more ›

If you choose to undergo the necessary procedures for hiring a car, or even easier, borrowing a friends, then where to go? more ›

Shanghai finally has an answer to Okay Airlines! The first of Shanghai Spring Airlines' Airbus 320s arrived at Hongqiao Airport earlier this week, and the budget airline expects its first flight to Shandong Province's Yantai to leave on July 18. The China Daily makes it seem as though Yantai is the only destination Shanghai Spring currently has permission to fly. more ›