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0 pointsseanmcdirmid2y ago0 comments

I’m coming from Seattle. Before the pandemic, we had two direct flights. Now the cheapest flight to Beijing is through Istanbul, and the next cheapest ticket (with a much more reasonable flight time) is 50% of the cost, and stop in either Japan or Korea to switch planes.

If you are going to southern China you wouldn’t be save so much going over far east Russia anyways, I guess.

Also, Chinese airlines can’t overfly Russia on the way to the USA, at least for newly approved flights: https://www.reuters.com/world/chinese-airlines-avoiding-russ...

Just 12*2 weekly round trip flights between the USA and China really sucks. There were a lot more before the pandemic. But it seems like we are going to 35 soon? https://simpleflying.com/us-china-lift-number-weekly-flights.... (Or already?)

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mixmastamyk2y ago

How is the visa, biometrics, surveillance situation there these days? Was just telling someone yesterday that I’ll probably never make it there.

seanmcdirmidOP2y ago

Visa situation is a bit easier since they don’t require an invitation letter for Americans anymore. I’m not sure about the biometrics and surveillance now, but it should be limited to a finger print and…China probably has little interest in monitoring you while in the country, they would rather have more tourists than less, as long as you aren’t unlucky enough to be picked for retaliation (or naive enough to snap pictures of navy ships in tourist areas).

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