Shanghai Pudong Airport

Given Shanghai's status as the most modern city in Asia and one of the leading cities in the world the airport is one of the worst big city airports in the world. Like myself I arrive here either from Hong kong Singapore or Beijing and compared to those its in the 5th league . Wait times for customs is atrocious and then if you are unlucky enough to have arrived at a busy time you will wait a long time for a taxi as well. The last time I went thru was 2 weeks ago; door to door from Hong Kong - 7 hours! This included 80mins wait for customs clearance 65 minutes for baggage claim (amazing took 145 minutes to get baggage from aircraft onto the belt!) 70 minutes for taxi! In comparison going the other way took 3.45 hours! Why the bosses of Shanghai put up with it is another story as they all pass thru VIP so are probably detached in their thinking about it. Other than wait times the architecture is rather cold the masonry is falling off at the toilets and corners needs painting needs to have a major make over.

Passed through with no problems we were labelled and led very efficiently it is an enormous airport but I didn't find the distances too problematical. The lack of English is something that I think they are trying to get to grips with. At least there were some restaurants where we could eat (quite cheaply) our flight was delayed by about 2.5hrs but we were kept informed by a notice board. I suppose if there was a serious delay then communication could be problematical.