Pudong airport review: what arriving there is actually like

Pudong International Airport is Shanghai’s main international gateway, and most long-haul flights use it. Getting from it into the city is covered elsewhere on this site, in the Pudong or Hongqiao comparison and the landing and getting into town answer; this piece assesses the airport itself.

What is good: it genuinely behaves like a modern large airport

The first strength is scale. High ceilings and deep floor plates leave spare room in arrivals and departures alike, so you are not immediately packed into a crowd, and the luggage is less irritating to move through it.

The second is signage. Bilingual Chinese and English runs continuously, with direct pointing to exits, baggage reclaim and rail, so the main routes need no asking. The third is cleanliness: floors, washrooms and waiting areas are kept up, and cleaners are still working late, which says more about management than any single piece of design. The fourth is everything past security: food and shops are spread widely, seats and charging points are dense, and a long wait for a flight passes easily.

What is poor: distance, walking, queues and prices

The distance from the city centre is the biggest problem: even an hour and a bit when things go well, longer in the evening, in rain or at night, which means anyone with two or three days in Shanghai loses half a day each way.

The second is the walk from the ground transportation centre to the terminal. The signs are not hard to follow; the walk is genuinely long, and hauling a suitcase along it feels harder than the map suggests. If your return gate is in a satellite hall, a people mover is added on top. The third is the immigration queue at peak arrival times: the process is clear, but you are standing and waiting, and how fast the queue moves depends on how many flights land at once. The fourth is that the two main terminals are separate buildings. You can walk between them, but that walk plus a second security check makes the transfer anything but trivial. The fifth is pricing inside, above the city for food and convenience goods. The sixth is the public area before security, where comfortable seating is scarce: sofas and reclining seats are mostly past the checkpoint. The last is language: duty-free shops and chain restaurants usually manage in English, but some exchange, SIM and information counters have staff who speak only Chinese.

The arrival sequence assessed step by step

The first stage is disembarking and the walk, and the stretch from the gate to immigration is where the scale of the airport shows; it cannot be hurried. The second is the health and immigration formalities. The forms and the checks are not complicated; what decides the experience is how many flights land at once, and filling in whatever you can before you get off saves real time. The third is the wait for baggage, where the carousels are orderly and clearly signed, a reasonable moment to sort out data and payment. The fourth is customs, usually smoother than immigration, where the green channel means walking straight out. The fifth is deciding how to leave: the decision has to be made here, and this is exactly where touts are most likely to approach you, so whatever price they quote, ignoring them is correct, and the official rank is always more reliable than anyone who greets you in the hall.

Connecting to a domestic flight, and the reality of an overnight

Two things decide a domestic connection. The first is the terminal: when the domestic and international legs are not in the same building, the movement between them and the second security check both have to be counted, and this is not a matter of a few steps. The second is time: add the immigration queue, the baggage wait and the walk between buildings together, and a short connection is riskier than it looks, so take the longer option rather than shaving the gap at the booking stage.

An overnight or a long layover runs like this: the airport operates around the clock, but late at night the shops, food outlets and counters have mostly closed, the lighting stays on and the available seating is mostly hard. The comfortable options are few: a paid rest area inside the terminal, or a night in a hotel near the airport.

Who should choose it, and who should avoid it

It suits anyone with a loose schedule who treats the landing day as half a day; transit passengers who are not going into the city at all; and anyone whose accommodation or business is already on the Pudong side.

It is the wrong choice for a traveller with two or three days in Shanghai and an early departure: two crossings of the city cut the trip into pieces, and anyone watching the budget will be disappointed too. Where the airport cannot be changed, put the first and last nights near the airport or along Metro Line 2.

The verdict: Pudong runs properly and is clearly signed, and the waiting and the walking after landing are the price built into it. Whether it treats you well depends mostly on how much time you give it: with time in hand it is smooth, and on a tight schedule it becomes a burden.