Shanghai Pudong Airport

✅ Trip Verified | After exiting from the plane to the arrival hall, everyone went into a bank of electronic machines to scan the passport. There is no sign telling people what to do. I just follow the crowd. I scanned my passport and placed my left 4 fingers on the glass plate. The machine kept on repeating “place your 4 fingers on the glass plate” and having countdown timing. After 2 minutes I hailed down an officer stood by 5-feet away and asked for help. He said, “Never mind, the immigration officer will do the finger printing process for you. It’s the same.” I explained that I was on transit and asked where I should go next. He directed me to take the escalator going down to the immigration “Dee Err Tai”. After I descended the escalator, I saw in front of me long lines of people facing windows #30, #32, #34, …#46, #48 a hundred meter to the left and right. There was an information booth in front of the escalator. I spoke in fluent Mandarin that I was on transit immediately and asked location of window #2. He pointed to the line directly in front which is window #34 and instructed me, “GO THERE!”. I waited in line in the “foreigner” section and after 20 minutes the immigration officer asked me for the visa form. That was the line applying for China entry Visa. So, the guy in the information booth just not bother to listen carefully and shoo me away. I was told to walk to the end of the building where there is window #2. There was no sign that I had to fill out a form for a temporary 24 hour transit visa but I saw a table with all the forms and fill it out anyway. There was a young woman with her 6 years old child in front of me. The officer gave her hard time asking for more document. Eventually, the woman was allowed to proceed for transit. After the facial recognition photo taking and finger print, I found a small sticker of 24 hour transit visa stamp affixed to my passport page. I had also to fill out a bottom stub to give to the immigration when exiting China. It is strange that there is no matching number with the top part of the card so that later immigration can match up and speedup processing in recognizing that this person has entered and exited the country. I waited 10 minutes to pick up my luggage from the carousel. There was at least a hundred other passengers placing their luggage into the X-ray machine and walked pass the green “Nothing to Declare” custom lane. This take times and eventually I was officially exit the airport. It’s a long 10 hours layover and only a bank of chairs in front of all the checkin counter. This section is fully seated with all the Chinese. People was cursing and yelling loudly into their phone regardless of the person sat next to him. His voice literally can be heard a block away. People are coughing /sneezing without covering their mouth or nose (I guess that’s how I caught the common cold suffering sickness 4 days later). I waited 7 hours and check in my luggage, got a new ticket (they don’t take the ticket issued from the airline flying to final destination). I gone thru security and immigration, onward to the gate. The ticket agent scanned the ticket and checked the passport, just ten feet away was another officer rechecking my passport then enter the plane. Stay away from China Transit. Save yourself aggravation.

Not Verified | This has to be the worst Airport I’ve ever been to in my life. Customer service is so horrible it’s a shame this is an international airport. I’m from the U.S and no one we found speaks any English whatsoever and if you ask if they do they just shake their head and keep on walking. It’s unfortunate that I had to stop at this airport enroute to Hong Kong. Never again to this airport.

✅ Trip Verified | A very frustrating and poorly organized airport. Upon arrival it took 30 minutes from a very remote part of the airport to Immigration. (I catch this flight every weekend so I know it is standard). It then took 50 minutes to clear immigration and we still had to wait quite some time for the bags to arrive. After an absurdly long wait for baggage you are met with a huge queue to leave the airport. All bags are scanned again to search for gifts or luxury products they can charge duty on. They rarely find anything as the security are laughing, play fighting and horsing around rather that looking at the security cameras. Shanghai airport staff have a unique unprofessionalism I have never seen anywhere else. Departure is a similar debacle, I arrived at the airport with 1 and half hours before my flight. (10.50 as the flight was 12.20) Unfortunately bags are scanned before entering the airport by a similar disinterested and unfocused security person, yawning and dozing and occasionally looking at the screen. ‘Security check 1’ this took 35 minutes just to get into the airport and by the time I went to check in the flight had closed. It’s important to add that check in staff can be rude at best. They found me a seat on the 1.00 pm flight which gave me 1 and a half hours to reach the gate. The usual chaos that takes place at immigration and security meant that after waiting in line for almost an hour I had to be rushed through security as I was going to miss yet another flight. The gate had been changed without any notice on the main board to the complete opposite side of the airport. Anything this airport can get wrong they will with flying colours. They have the latest infrastructure but it seems when they get a system that is efficient they immediately change it to create complete chaos. I dread using this airport! They have excessive security checks but the sheer lack of serious professionalism across almost all support staff makes you feel as if a person could carry anything through their security.

✅ Trip Verified | A very frustrating and poorly organized airport. Upon arrival it took 30 minutes from a very remote part of the airport to Immigration. (I catch this flight every weekend so I know it is standard). It then took 50 minutes to clear immigration and we still had to wait quite some time for the bags to arrive. After an absurdly long wait for baggage you are met with a huge queue to leave the airport. All bags are scanned again to try and squeeze some extra money in duty for gifts or luxury products they find in suitcases. Sadly they rarely find anything as the security are laughing, play fighting and horsing around rather that looking at the security cameras. Shanghai airport staff have a unique unprofessionalism I have never seen anywhere else. Departure is a similar debacle, I arrived at the airport with 1 and half hours before my flight. (10.50 as the flight was 12.20) Unfortunately bags are ‘scanned before entering the airport by a similar disinterested and unfocused security person, yawning and dozing and occasionally looking at the screen. ‘Security check 1’ this took 35 minutes just to get into the airport and by the time I went to check in the flight had closed. It’s important to add that check in staff can be rude at best. They found me the worst seat they could on a 1.00 pm flight which gave me 1 and a half hours to reach the gate. The usual chaos that takes place at immigration and security meant that after waiting in line for almost an hour I had to be rushed through security as I was going to miss yet another flight. Expectedly, the gate had been changed without any notice on the main board to the complete opposite side of the airport. Anything this airport can get wrong they will with flying colours. They have the latest infrastructure but it seems when they get a system that is efficient they immediately change it to create complete chaos. Frankly I am shocked that they don’t feel any shame or embarrassment for delivering a system that could be improved by a 5 year old. I dread using this airport! They have excessive security checks but the sheer lack of serious professionalism across almost all support staff makes you feel unsafe. Still have to say the treatment of passengers is still better than in any US airport I have visited!

✅ Trip Verified | I am a Star Alliance Gold member, so I was not overly concerned when I was facing a ten-hour layover at this airport: I thought I would spend it in the lounge and get a good day's worth of work done. Not so fast: you must enter China and transit without a visa if you connect between terminals 1 and 2. Going through immigration is relatively straightforward if you know that you need the blue slip and not the yellow slip. The queue was long, taking about 45 minutes to clear. If you do not know that you need the blue slip, you have to do the whole procedure of queuing up twice. Don't expect anybody to speak English or be helpful in any way. Online check-in was not permitted, so once I cleared immigration, I had to wait until the counters opened about four hours before the flight. So six hours were spent in the grimy public area, repeatedly harassed by people trying to sell me iPhones and taxi rides. Vegan food is not available. Once I could finally check in, I went to the lounge. It is one of the worst I have seen. Food choices were meagre, particularly for vegans, but to their credit, they had some nice loose tea. The rest area was very noisy and not particularly conducive to get work done.

✅ Trip Verified | The worst airport I’ve ever seen in my 33 years of traveling. When we went through customs they had 1 booth open with a very long long. We waited one hour, which means people behind us could have waited up to three. Every staff member ranged from unwelcoming to rude. I asked one how to get to terminal 2 and he literally shrugged his shoulders and walked away. The food options were literally beef or pork, everywhere. I eat neither. It’s probably the worst airport we could have spent 10 hours in, we were going to try and explore Shanghai a bit but gave up due to everyone’s attitude and how confusing the airport was to navigate.

✅ Trip Verified | Shanghai was a connection with China Eastern Airlines. I will pay more and take longer journeys to avoid Pudong Airport. The international terminal is very dated. There are no charging stations or outlets per seat. It's 2019, that is unheard of. They do have a few charging stations. There is roughly 2 per gate with not all working. And, those stations are only for two people (one each side). Doing the math, 2 people can charge per gate. In my 2-layovers totaling 10 hours, I saw only 1 security guard and he was standing at Starbucks getting coffee. He wasn't concerned that most of the seats are used by people sleeping on them (mainly one particular race). However, no one was there to get them to sit up so people could sit. Passengers are standing because people are using 3-4 seats so they can lay. Others are using empty seats for their bags. There was a bratty child who's parents were lying on the seats while he was trying to fly his drone in the terminal. He hit multiple people with it but no one was there to correct it. I used the kiosk to get internet. the code never worked. Asking the staff, they had no idea. It's a horrible terminal.

Not Verified | This is the worst airport in the world! Smelly toilets! Long queues! Had to walk in the cold and rain to the plane! Waiting lounges were as cold as a fridge with zero heating! Terrible! Simply and absolutely terrible!

✅ Trip Verified | Roughly 5 hour HK/INTL transit, all on Air China Terminal 2. First got fingerprinted at a kiosk and obtained a receipt which was easy. Next I got upstairs and saw a sign for transit passengers, yet still somehow managed to wait in the wrong line. I became quite upset. Ultimately though I was shown the correct line and got a 24 hour visa free transit stamp. I then had to exit through customs as there was no separate lane leading to the gates for transit passengers. Since I was outside the secure area anyway, I went outside and got some fresh air. There was a small lake and a wooded area right near the terminal. I didn't feel I had adequate time to visit the city, but it was a possibility. Finally I went back inside and went through the exit passport check and security and got into the gate area. Overall a nice clean terminal with plenty of seating, clean restrooms, and water dispensers. In short however, I was quite disappointed that the transit experience was so different from the one in Beijing, where if you had an immediate connection you could simply follow a clearly marked and only slightly tedious path to get right to your connecting gate, without having to fill out any paperwork. I hope that the signage in Shanghai becomes more clear and less confusing for international transit passengers, simply stating that you have to get a 24 hour transit stamp, so just fill out a blue card, not a yellow one, and go straight to counters number 1 or 2 at the far left hand side of the building if you're arriving in Terminal 2 as you enter to do so.

✅ Trip Verified | What a pathetic excuse for an international airport! I flew a round-trip from Pudong to New York and then when I returned to Pudong, caught a domestic flight to Nanchang. On both legs this airport was grossly understaffed. On my outbound flight only 2 of the immigration desks for foreigners were manned and most were empty. The queue was long and slow moving. Nobody came round to check if anyone had an imminent flight so it would be easy to miss your flight here. On the way back it was the same at immigration with most desks unmanned. When queuing up to check-up for my flight to Nanchang, the queues for domestic check-in in terminal 1 were so long that they stretched way beyond the snake barriers and it became confusing as to which desks passengers could use. For some reason China Eastern domestic passengers were only allowed to use the 'B' check-in area, even though the 'C' check-in area, which also belongs to China Eastern, was open but with hardly any passengers. Again many desks were unmanned and staff did nothing to assist or prevent people queue-jumping. Furthermore, seating is woefully inadequate and the staff does nothing to stop local passengers reserving seats for their friends and family hence it is often impossible to find somewhere to sit down. Overall this airport is a national embarrassment to China and passengers should try to avoid using it, especially terminal 1.