If you and your friend arrive in Pudong Airport on different flight and you want to meet him/her/them, but you don’t know where is the best place to wait because you may not be able to use your mobile phone to communicate, this article is right for you.

Unlike other airport, Pudong Airport is designed that all the international flight passengers pass the same custom inspection gate, then down to the luggage claim area. Then, guess what, they will all come out of the luggage claim area through the same gate.

So the gate is the best place to pick up another passenger. Check this page:

http://wangjianshuo.com/personal/places/pudongairport/Arrival.htm

The gate is shown in the picture below:

The two persons were waiting for their friends coming out of the gate. Below is the picture looking into the gate when it is open – you can directly see the luggage claim area.

Wait there and you will not miss anybody coming from outside China (including Hong Kong, and Macau) to Shanghai via PVG. Please note that the domestic and international sections of the airport are seperate and there is a domestic arrival gate for domestic arrival like this too.

There will typically be a lot of people waiting there and the gate will be crowded. Lots of them will holding a large name plate for the friend they will pickup.

If you don’t feel safe enough, you can agree to meet at certain gate. For example, gate 18 is a good choice since it is just at the opposite side of the arrival gate.

GL asked: Is there any car rental service in Shanghai Pudong Airport?

Yes. You can rent a car at Shanghai Pudong Airport easily. Your familiar car renting company AVIS has came to Shanghai.

You can call their reservation phone number 86-21-6229-1119 to contact AVIS.

AVIS Pudong Airport Office:

Phone: 86-21-68346668

Fax: 86-21-38480736

Office Hour: 8:30-17:00, Monday to Friday

Tip: If you are in U.S., diall 011-86-21-68346668 to reach the office. Shanghai is located at GMT +8 zone.

Price

Volkswagen Santana 2000, 370 RMB or 45 USD

Passat, 520 RMB or 63 USD

Buick G: 600 RMB or 72 USD

Buick GL8: 680 RMB or 82 USD

Volkswagen Passat. Credit: http://www.scottahearn.com

Buick GL8. Credit: syd.com.cn

Tip: 1 USD = 8.3 RMB

Above price is RMB/day if rent within one week. If you rent longer, the price will be lower. Source: Avischina.com (Chinese site)

Disclaimer: The information provided is for your reference only. There is no garrentee for the accuracy of the information. This personal site is not affiliation of the sites mentioned.

Question: How convinient it will be to hire a 7 to 10 passenger taxi from the airport. Will it take long to wait for one?

This question comes from Mr. Lim.

Well. Most taxies in Pudong airport are the standard taxi – for 4 passengers at most. There is no larger taxi in general. I suggest you to take two taxies, or book a taxi in advance.

I am not sure if this is conveinient for you. You can call +86-21-82222 for a Dazhong taxi (there is only 7 seat taxi at this line). Note: They may speak Chinese only.

Call +86-21-62758800 (Jin Jiang Taxi) or +86-21-62580000 (Qiang Sheng Taxi) for 10-person taxi reservation. It is the most convenient way to move around Shanghai for team activities and for families. The fee is exactly the same as traditional taxi plus 5 RMB (15 initial fee, including 3 km, 2 RMB per kilometer).

Daozhong, Jin Jiang and Qiang Sheng are the three best taxi companies in Shanghai.

According to a newspaper article, wireless access has been implemented in Pudong airport. Is it true? I will check it the next time.

One of my friend asked is there any public hot sport of wireless access? My answer was no. Starbucks announced the plan to enable their stores with wireless, but it is not implemented yet.

Please read this complain on my PVGBBS.

Dear Mr. Wang,

I am very disappointed to see that the staff working in Pudong Airport speak poor English, They either can not understand questions asked in English, or can not answer quetions fluently and effectively.Furthermore, they don’t even use ‘May I help you’ or ‘Have a nice day’such neccessary greetings to English-speaking guests. It really shames me,shames Chinese people, shames the airport as well as Shanghai.

Furthermore, it seems the domestic flight ticketing counter does not accept foreign credit card and the machine for accessing credit card is quite old.

The last thing I would like to say is that the airport staff have not been well groomed. they are supposed to iron their shirts, comb their hair well and pay more attention to their motions and gestures.

I sincerely wish these problems I mentioned above would be corrected and improved in very near future.

Source: PVGBBS

I completely agree with Grace on the service quality of PVG. It is true that the service is very bad. Grace is very careful to note the small differences between the service of PVG and other airport – these details make big difference in general.

I need to explain that it is very interesting atmosphere in China that private companies provide much better quality of service to customers – by private companies, I mean the companies owned by business owners. On the contary, the state-owned enterprises still use the old way to treat their customers – rude and hash…

Pudong airport is still the state owned property. There is not any incentive for the staff, even the managers of PVG to improve the quality – the better their service is, the more effort they need to pay, but there is no any change on their income or bonous. It is the same case as in the famous Pearl Tower in Shanghai. You can try the service – still bad.

I have been working on information about Pudong for some time and setup a Pudong Airport BBS (PVGBBS). I think this effort is vaulable because:

• Lack of Pudong Airport information on Internet
• Poor information guide from PVG
• Poor usability of PVG

Lack of Pudong Airport information on Internet

Try to search on Google or other search engineers for “Shanghai Pu Dong Airport“, “Pu Dong Airport“, “Shanghai Airport“, “PVG“…, I guess you won’t be satisfied with the result it returned. It is not easy to find a map about Pudong airport and it is even hard to find transportation informations and hotels…. I just created some one page on Pu Dong airport on my personal web site one year before. I didn’t expect it to be the No. 1 entry page for my web site one year later. More than 30% of my visitors to my site by typing “Pu Dong Airport” in Google. The page also contribute to 5.45% of total document hits.

I received lot of very positive comment on the page via email or PVGBBS. This is the reason I want to continue to improve and make it the No. 1 site on Internet about PVG.

Poor information guide from PVG

The information query for Pudong airport is not satisfactionary. The airport is very large, new and beautiful, with great equipments. But the software – I mean the management and service are still far behind airport like SFO. They provides the information hotline, +86-21-38484500, but it is only the switchboard, instead of call center. The only person you can find is the operator.

I believe a web site need to be setup and help travellers to survive in Shanghai.

Poor usability of PVG

Generally speaking, I like Pudong Airport very much. Its modern design is very impressive. However, it is too large and people get tired to navigate from Entrance Hall to the boarding bridge and to ticketing island… The signs there are sometimes confusing. It seems more time and effort need to be spent on it.

Can anyone tell me the rank of customer satisfaction of PVG among all Asia or International airprort? I am really interested in that.

See also:

• PVGBBS
• Pudong Airport
• Google result of Pudong Airport
• FAQ about Pudong Airport