Flight Log of Qatar Airways Flight 870 from Doha to Shanghai Pudong on September 2nd, 2016

This post follows the previous one on Qatar Airways flight 246.

Midnight seemed to be a higher peak for transits at Doha Airport than early morning, as we waited longer at transit screening this time.

Also, compared to the invigorating bustle of the airport morning we witnessed on our outbound flight, this time the whole airport seemed quieter, even somewhat gloomy to me. Thank God there were people for overnight flights to keep the whole building from degrading into a ghost town.

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I mentioned how sleepy I was on the previous flight due to early rising, and I was still tired after sleeping for almost the whole duration of that flight. That plus the limited transition time at Doha airport meant I basically sat there in the terminal for a little bit more than an hour before boarding the last leg of my flight.

The first surprise of boarding was that it’s a Boeing 77W with Oneworld livery. The second surprise was that its economy was still 3-3-3 configuration, as I thought they should long be extinct from Qatar’s fleet.

I was sort of anticipating the night views of Dubai, but Dubai disappointed me again with its thick clouds blinding everything.

Probably due to the delayed departure, it caught my surprise that sun rose so early that day, as I was expecting more time flying in the dark.

Then I caught more sleep.

It wasn’t long after we entered Chinese airspace that the visibility to the ground dropped terribly, sign of a nation plagued by air pollution and many other things that resulted in inaction. So, I basically adjusted the clarity and contrast of every photo that followed.

Then, I accidentally saw we were flying past the city of Zhangjiajie (张家界), the beauty of which I was fortunate to experience three years ago. Sadly, cloudy weather and miserable visibility kept pretty much of the city under veil.

Below the clouds was a city domed by air pollution. It wasn’t until we flew very low that I could have a clear view of the ground.

Now, the bureaucracy, if not aristocracy of Chinese Air Traffic Control and Chinese Air Force sort of mandated all planes coming from the west of PVG airport shall land in runway 17R/35L, regardless of their destination terminal. So for the next 17 minutes, we were given a thorough tour of Shanghai Pudong Airport. Not the fun one.

After quite some walking, we cleared immigration and was waiting for our checked bags.

I mentioned in the post of AA187 to Beijing, that I would use harsher words on Shanghai Pudong Airport, and I meant by that: Whoever runs the airport baggage claim is a son of a ***** with a worm-infested brain, who thought to demonstrate the stupidity and absurdity of the nation in ways other than banning Google.

Back to sanity, there’s an abundance of belts at the airport, some of which were idle by the time I arrived at the baggage claim, only to find our bags were scheduled for the same belt as an Ethiopian flight before us. The problem was that, I was pretty sure I walked faster than the baggage cars, and I cleared immigration with literally no waiting, which meant any intellectual being, expect the one previously described, could and should open a new belt for our flight, they didn’t.
Now the problem of the Ethiopian flight was not only the excessive amount of baggage, but (I reasonably guessed) the delay of most African visitors experienced at immigration, which meant their bags would stay on the belts unattended for a lot of time. However, the unnecessarily intellectual baggage handling system of Pudong Airport (and the absence of a human baggage handler) meant the system tried to give people the illusion that it takes good care of their checked bags (which, I guessed it didn’t for the majority of underground baggage system. Hell knows how bags were thrown around when nobody’s watching), and it demonstrated that extensive degree of care by stopping the delivery when it sensed that there’s already bags on the belt. The result of all this was that, we were basically waiting for Ethiopian flight bags to be largely claimed for thirty or so minutes, and then the delivery of our bags.

Thank God, knowing the insufficiency of their X-Ray machines, the custom officers basically let everybody through without screening (and taxing) their bags.

Then there was some disagreement between us three about how to go home. My parents thought taking the coach directly at the airport would save all the trouble, while I thought the bus station in Hangzhou wasn’t conveniently located and suggested to take the train. Since they outnumbered me 2 to 1, we headed for the bus station at Pudong Airport, only to arrive there at 1805 and found the 1800 service gone and 1900 service sold out, by which point they finally agreed to the train.

Then I naively thought there would be plenty of train tickets back to Hangzhou at Hongqiao Railway Station, as is always the case. It was on the subway to Hongqiao that my parents’ unmindful search of tickets revealed the fact that train tickets had almost sold out. (Hindsight told me it was due to Friday night travel, presumably combined with Hangzhou Government’s plan to drive people out that restricted ticket sales.) So the rest of the subway ride was basically frantic ticket hunting.

Thank God we found tickets from Shanghai South Rail Station, but not to Hangzhou. The strange thing about the railway system was that, I could find seats from Shanghai to Jiaxing, and from Jiaxing to Hangzhou, but not Shanghai to Hangzhou, which further supported the conspiracy theory that Hangzhou Government was restricting ticket availability. But since I know there would be seats onboard, no worry.

And it turned out to be so, with half the train’s seating capacity disembarking at Hangzhou East Station. Apparently, the government’s scheme, if it’s true, didn’t work out.
END