Connecting flight between Shanghai and Beijing

[stelingo]

I took a flight with Hainan airlines from Prague to Shanghai via Beijing last Friday. We were scheduled to land in Beijing 5.55 am and my flight to Shanghai was at 8.15 am. However we were about half an hour late landing in Beijing, which meant I missed my connecting flight. Due to bad weather I ended up having to wait 12 hours at the airport before boarding my flight to Shanghai.

This has now made me anxious about my return flight. I fly Shanghai to Beijing and arrive at around 8.30 pm. My onward flight leaves at 1.30 am. Looks fine on paper but so did the outward flight.

So I'm considering getting the bullet train to Beijing to make sure I'm there for the flight back to Prague. However I'm wondering whether they will cancel my ticket all the way through to Prague if I miss the first flight?

Anybody got any experience or advice on this?

[889]

Normally you can't board at an intermediate stop where you're supposed to be just transiting. Call the airline, of course, but I suspect the answer is you can't get yourself to Beijing and board there, unless you re-do your ticket.

 

(This assumes you're ticketed on a single itinerary Shanghai to Prague, with a transit in Beijing, in which case the airline will be responsible for making arrangments if you miss the connection. You should be concerned about this only if delayed arrival in Prague would cause you lots of problems.)

 

There are websites where you can check historical ontime performance of a particular flight.

[Flickserve]

Change your flight from Shanghai to an earlier flight. You have around 33% chance of your plane not leaving on time in Shanghai iirc. So do not assume to be on time.

I was leaving Harbin at 9am to Beijing and then originally planned to catch a connection to Hong Kong at 3pm. The Harbin plane was so late, the connection was missed. Very fortunately, I had previously decided to change plans and add an extra night at Beijing after Harbin. And the simple reason was the risk of potential delayed flight out of Harbin.

[ChTTay]

If you didn't buy two single, separate tickets (one to BJ then a separate one to Prague) then it's unlikely you can cancel just the initial flight. You might be able to cancel the whole flight and book onto another. Give the airline or your travel agent a ring.

Chinese airports are some of the worst in the world for delays. It's not something they hide from though as there are even articles on China Daily about it. Like this one;

http://m.chinadaily.com.cn/en/2015-03/23/content_19885444.htm

I took a flight to Shanghai once in order to travel onto the USA. The flight to the USA was delayed 8 hours after I arrived but almost everyone else on the flight (mostly all Americans) had been delayed 24 hours.

[stelingo]

Thanks for the advice. I shall look into xhanging my flight.

[vellocet]

The Chinese Air Force can, at any time of their choosing, seize civilian airspace for their own aircraft.  This results in hours of needless delays for travelers, but the PLAAF just doesn't care.  I sat on the runway in Shanghai for three solid hours, missing my connection in America, because of this.  The aircrew only said that they couldn't give a reason that we were delayed, which means it was a secret, which means the military closed the airspace.  Add to this the other causes of delays, and it's pretty bad.  Five hours layover seems sufficient to me, but if you really need that flight then take the train, I guess.