\nThe images in this post are hosted on Imgur. Email me should there be any display problems.<\/span><\/p>\n
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.
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![\"Doha](\"http:\/\/imgur.com\/gmP7wWU.jpg\")
<\/a><\/br>Doha Airport Interior<\/br>Very much modernly designed.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Doha Airport Interior<\/br>Very much modernly designed.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Boarding Flight to Shanghai<\/br>Oh, it\u2019s an Oneworld livery.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Doha Airport at Night<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Doha Airport at Night<\/br>Those two planes were stuck there for quite some time.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Doha Airport at Night<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Qatar Airways B77W on Taxiways<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Doha Airport at Night<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Das Island of UAE<\/br>Primarily inhabited by oil and gas industry personnel.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Onboard Entertainment<\/br>I sort of had to kill time before meals were served, and this was something like the only playable game to me. Although it\u2019s really weird to play pools with a game console.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>The Palm Jumeirah<\/p><\/div> <\/br>The Palm Jumeirah and Downtown Dubai<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Dubai Suburb and Academic City<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Town of Masafi, Fujairah<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Fujairah<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Lights in the Gulf of Oman<\/br>Presumably from oil rigs or ships.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Sunrise in the Gulf of Oman<\/p><\/div> <\/br>First Meal Services<\/br>I picked beef. Whatever vegetables left in the main course tasted strangely after dehydration. The rest of the meal was actually not bad. What I didn\u2019t like was that, I was served this meal 80 minutes after takeoff. Since this is an overnight flight, I didn\u2019t like this cutting into my sleep time.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Qatar Airways B77W (A7BAF) Cabin<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Second Meal Service<\/br>I won\u2019t comment on fish because I rarely eat fish (I would never learn how to do with fishbone, that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t hesitate to pick fish onboard because I know it would be bone-free.). Fruits were good but monotonous. I liked the Yogurt but sweets would be nicer.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>West of Qianxi (\u9ed4\u897f) County<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Mountainous Landscape of Guizhou<\/p><\/div> <\/br>County of Zunyi (\u9075\u4e49)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Zunyi (\u9075\u4e49) Airport<\/p><\/div> <\/br>County of Meitan (\u6e44\u6f6d)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Mountainous Landscape of Guizhou<\/p><\/div> <\/br>County of Xiushan (\u79c0\u5c71)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>County of Baojing (\u4fdd\u9756)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Another Plane Flying Below Us<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Tianmen (\u5929\u95e8) Mountains<\/p><\/div> <\/br>City of Zhangjiajie (\u5f20\u5bb6\u754c) and Its Airport<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Mists of North-west Hunan<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Farmlands by Yangtze River<\/br>S88 State Highway Crossing Farmlands<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Fenshui (\u5206\u6c34) County of Hanchuan (\u6c49\u5ddd) City<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Xianghongdian (\u54cd\u6d2a\u7538) Reservoir outside Qingshan (\u9752\u5c71) County<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Winding River Pi (\u6de0\u6cb3) at South-West Liu\u2019An (\u516d\u5b89) City<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Hefei Airport in the Distance<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Airport in East Hefei<\/br>I couldn’t find its name on the map, so presumably it’s a military airport.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Crossing Yangtze River<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Nanjing Airport<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Nanjing-Hangzhou High Speed Railway and Lishui (\u6ea7\u6c34) Railway Station<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Rural Jiangsu, County of Rongbing (\u8363\u70b3) and State Highway G4011<\/p><\/div> <\/br>City of Changzhou (\u5e38\u5dde)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Clouds and Mists above City of Wuxi (\u65e0\u9521)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Rainbow in Clouds<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Clouds and Spoilers above City of Kunshan (\u6606\u5c71)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Plane’s Shadow on Clouds<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Reflection of Sun in Rivers<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Reflection of Sun in Ponds<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Reflection of Sun in Rivers<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Flying over Rural Shanghai in Final Approach<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Rural Shanghai near Airport<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Landing at Shanghai Pudong Airport<\/br> We landed on runway 35L.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Crossing Runway 35R of Shanghai Pudong Airport<\/p><\/div> <\/br>China Eastern Airlines B77W Parked on Apron<\/p><\/div> <\/br>China Eastern Airlines A332 (B-5920) Parked on Apron<\/br>No flights scheduled for the whole day.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>KLM B744 (PH-BFH) Parked on Apron<\/p><\/div> <\/br>British Airways B77E Taxiing<\/br>Landed just before us.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>China Eastern Airlines Fleet at Pudong Airport Terminal 1<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Ground Vehicles Waiting at Pudong Airport Terminal 1<\/br>The fact that they needed to wait for plane traffics before crossing shows how terribly designed Shanghai Pudong Airport was.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Pudong Airport Terminal 2<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Aircrafts at Pudong Airport Terminal 2<\/p><\/div> <\/br>UPS B763 Taxiing<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Juneyao Airlines A321 (B-8317) Taxiing<\/br>Off to Beihai<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Turkish Airlines B77W Parked on Apron<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Etihad Airlines B789 (A6-BLH) Parked on Apron<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Air Mauritius A343 Parked on Apron<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Singapore Airlines A388 At the Gate<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Emirates Airlines A388 At the Gate<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Head of Air Canada B77W (C-FITL)<\/br>Off to Toronto.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Two American Airlines Plane At the Gate<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Aircrafts at Pudong Airport Terminal 2<\/p><\/div> <\/br>American Airlines B788 (N807AA) Pushing Back<\/br>Off to Chicago.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>American Airlines B77E (N758AN) At the Gate<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Singapore Airlines A388 and American Airlines B788 Waiting for Departure<\/br>It must be air traffic control, as both planes waited there for quite some time even as I watched them during my walk to immigration.<\/span><\/p><\/div> 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 Back to sanity, there\u2019s 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\u2019t. Thank God, knowing the insufficiency of their X-Ray machines, the custom officers basically let everybody through without screening (and taxing) their bags.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 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\u2019s plan to drive people out that restricted ticket sales.) So the rest of the subway ride was basically frantic ticket hunting.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/br>Shanghai South Railway Station Interior<\/p><\/div>\n And it turned out to be so, with half the train\u2019s seating capacity disembarking at Hangzhou East Station. Apparently, the government\u2019s scheme, if it\u2019s true, didn\u2019t work out. 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… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,172,2],"tags":[213,211],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThe first surprise of boarding was that it\u2019s 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\u2019s fleet.
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\nI was sort of anticipating the night views of Dubai, but Dubai disappointed me again with its thick clouds blinding everything.
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\nProbably 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.
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\nThen I caught more sleep.
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\nIt wasn\u2019t 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<\/del>. So, I basically adjusted the clarity and contrast of every photo that followed.
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\nThen, I accidentally saw we were flying past the city of Zhangjiajie (\u5f20\u5bb6\u754c), 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.
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\nBelow the clouds was a city domed by air pollution. It wasn\u2019t until we flew very low that I could have a clear view of the ground.
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\nNow, 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.
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\nAfter quite some walking, we cleared immigration and was waiting for our checked bags.<\/p>\n in ways other than banning Google<\/del>.<\/p>\n
\nNow 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\u2019t for the majority of underground baggage system. Hell knows how bags were thrown around when nobody\u2019s watching), and it demonstrated that extensive degree of care by stopping the delivery when it sensed that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nEND<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"