Questions and Answers

Hello, great blog.

I may be offered a teaching post according to what I’m hearing within the next few days, over in Guilin China. What carrier/route recommendations do you have?

I’m currently in Portland but since I have some things to take care of regarding California (and a new passport) before I leave anyway, sometime in mid-Sept 2016 I could leave from Portland or say John Wayne SNA to any west coast airport. I want to minimize fatigue and I don’t care about points since I haven’t flown since the 90s. (Late 40s, diabetic with no insulin needed yet but not a thin guy yet either). If they will put me up overnight somewhere so I am not spending 20 hours on a plane that is what I want. The flight is on their dime but I suppose they will probably book coach.

So far the best option I am seeing is a 2 hr flight to San Francisco then switching over to say All Nippon Airways for the 12 hour haul to Kansai Intl Airport, then taking a day, then leaving the next day for Guilin via Shanghai via Juneyao and Shanghai Air, about 5 hours in flight.

I would rather have a stop or layover in Japan Singapore or Hong Kong (which I visited in the 90s) than Shanghai, which seems still the quickest transition point to get to Guilin. I hate Narita. Agreed that Japanese airlines are far superior to ours and I had bad flights on both United and Delta.

Thoughts?

Hi John,

Judging you would like to avoid Shanghai at all cost and want to be more comfortable, I suggest you take any flight down to either Los Angeles or San Francisco and do what you have to do in California. Then fly Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong and connect to Guilin on Dragonair (Cathay Dragon).

However you might have to book this as two separate tickets and the recent change in Oneworld baggage policy cannot check your baggage all the way through from Portland to Guilin if its on 2 separate ticket. But since you have business to deal with in California, this might not be a big problem for you. You can also fit in a longer or even a overnight layover in Hong Kong for you to rest and recoup before flying out again.

Hope this helps