Ua857

I was just looking at the upgrade list of UA857 on April 21. The Polaris upgrade list is really weird, since the "upgrades" all got assigned seats in economy. I know it's a China route so upgrades are weird, but upgrading to Polaris should mean a seat in Polaris not economy? Anyone knows what's happening? The Premium Plus list looks fine.
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Flights seem super expensive (1.7K one way for economy, 2X that for RT) at even the most discounted fares but also seem very empty in general. Trying to gauge upgrade chances from T fare to Polaris with 80 PlusPoints.
Based on expert mode seems like 9+ available in business across all business class codes. But strange situation in general so hoping to see if anyone’s done it recently.
Thank you!

Here’s an updated November 27th, 2022 process to get from the US to China for those looking to reference.
Found out my 90 year-old mother in Zhejiang fell (again) on Thanksgiving evening while in Baltimore 11/24/2022. Had nothing else to do so I went to China. No prior knowledge or entry requirements or travel information. Just a passport and the beginning of a plan.
Booked a flight from BWI-SFO for the morning of 11/25/2022. 8:33am. 14 seats open. The earliest flight to China was UA857 SFO-ICN-PVG. 9:05am Saturday 11/26/2022. 60 seats open.
That means 12 hours to pack, research, book flights/layover hotel/Covid test, text my boss I was taking 3 weeks maximum PTO and maybe extending with FMLA effective immediately immediately. Everyone was out of office, since it was Thanksgiving. Boss said yes the next morning, but I was already in San Francisco anyways. Took a $10 Walgreens at-home test just to make sure I was negative before flying across the country for nothing.
As I was saying. Landed in SF at 11am local time. Took the free airport AirTrain to the Worksite Labs drive-through Covid testing location in San Bruno. There’s one in the airport terminal too but it was $250 for 90 minute result. Got the Express PCR with 12-hour results for $150 plus a discount code TESTNOW $20 off. Anything to save a hundred bucks.
Walked 10 minutes back to the airport train, rode it to the terminal, waited for my hotel shuttle (booked an Airport Marriott property 5 minutes away). They let me check in early so I had time before my flight tomorrow.
Took the subway to see the Golden Gate Bridge. It was nice. Came back to the hotel. Got my negative Covid results at 8pm PST, 8 hours after I took the test, uploaded to the Chinese Embassy WeChat thing. 5 minutes later and I got a red rejection notice. Forgot to upload my flight itinerary, fixed it, got the green health QR code 5 minutes after that, and slept 8 hours.
Got up at 5:30am to take the shuttle to SFO International Terminal. Check-in line was long. Everyone had to re-do their health declaration because it has to expire after you land in Shanghai, not just when you depart. It’s fine and took like 3 more minutes.
Agent verified both QR codes (Covid negative and entry health declaration, and passport.) Security was fast. Drank a red wine mini bottle that I got from my first flight in because the flight attendants were nice.
10 minutes through regular security. Got to the gate 85 minutes early. Upgrade cleared to United Polaris 60 minutes before departure. Gate agents were really mean.
Stopped in Seoul 1 hour, to change crews. No passengers on or off. Landed in Shanghai. Took 2 hours to get through everything and get busses to the quarantine hotel. Food there was absolute shit. Get a relative to order takeout for you or pack before your flight. That’s all for now.

I've been desperately trying to book a direct flight from the US to China and avoid the whole 48 hour double test fiasco. On Kayak I found Flight UA857 which is listed as direct from SFO to PVG. The issue is now that I'm on the checkout screen it's saying we'll have a 1 hour and 15 minute stop in Seoul. Does this now mean that I'm technically transiting through Korea? Do I still need to get the two tests?

A flight route from the United States to Shanghai has been suspended for 2 weeks by China's civil aviation regulator following a few imported COVID-19 cases.
United Airlines' Flight UA857 from San Francisco to Shanghai, which has been suspended multiple times, will be put on hold from August 8 after 5 passengers on a flight tested positive for COVID-19 on July 18, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Thursday.
The administration launched its suspension mechanism for international passenger flights in June 2020 and updated the policy in December 2020 to further contain the spread of the coronavirus.
A flight suspension is extended from 1 week to 2 weeks if the number of passengers testing positive reaches 5. The suspension lasts for 4 weeks if the number reaches 10.
If all of an airline's inbound passengers test negative 3 weeks in a row, it will be allowed to increase its flights to 2 per week

• San Francisco-Shanghai flight suspended over COVID-19 2022-07-28

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https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/2207288574/

On July 1, the CAAC announced suspension against the following ELEVEN flights: 9C8530, CZ312, JD430, HU492, CA932, CZ3040, CA934, BS325, UA857, KL831, and AC27:
https://www.ikkyinchina.com/2022/07/01/oh-boy-the-caac-suspends-11-flights-to-china/

So I purchased a direct flight with United Airlines, Flight number UA857, at the end of March. I'll be flying out of San Francisco to Shanghai. My ticket clearly states that it's SFO-PVG, so it's direct with no layovers. It's listed on the Chinese Consulate website in Dallas as the acceptable flights to gain entry to china: Chinese Consulate Notice, but I'm flying out of San Francisco.
However, after talking to United Airline customer service, they said this flight would have a "quick stop" in ICN to change aircrafts, but it won't be reflected in my ticket or would my ticket number or flight number change. He clearly said, "it'll take about five minutes". I only know this information, because a customer service representative looked deep within the United Airline System and it's not reflected anywhere on my ticket, on my own personal interface, or anything.
So would this ticket be able to be used to gain a Green Health code from SF Embassy? I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with something like this. Thanks.

I would like to thank a group of people on Reddit who helped and inspired us, and want to write down our experience to help others.
My husband and I made a firm decision in the beginning : either we go as a whole family altogether or we do not move. Initially, both my husband’s and my employers (two different employers) in China got the WPN and PU letters for us. However, neither of our PU letters have our kids’ names and we were told by the embassy that this can only get visas for adults but not kids. Thanks to Irishmaninchina’s note in Reddit, showed us that the High Level Talent Confirmation Letter (let’s call it HTCL here) can get R visa to bring the whole family, including kids. That was a big encouragement for us after all the frustrations! Evaluating our personal credentials, we believe both of us could qualify and requested our employers to apply for the HTCL for us.
It is important to note that you will need to first cancel your WPN if you already have one to apply for the HTCL. The cancelation can take about a week. So both of our employers first canceled our original WPNs and then applied for HTCL for us.
My husbands’ HTCL got approved first in early August, so we went ahead to apply for visas for the whole family to the DC embassy. We had no idea how long it would take by that time. But again, several posts on Reddit gave us some direction. Here is our time frame:
Day 1: we sent the first email with HTCL to DC embassy
Day 13: DC embassy gave us response say we missed a couple things in the application. We did correction on the same day
Day 15: DC embassy told us that our application got preapproval and can mail passports with other documents. We mailed everything they required on the same day
Day 21: We received our passports with visas from DC embassy. Husband got R visa. My kids and I got S2 visas, multi entry, valid for 10 yrs.
Day 22: 1. Booked UA857 from SFO to PVG as well as our domestic connection flight to fly us to SFO. There is a benefit to book both flights on the same trip by using United’s multi-stop booking function: you can have the international flight’s luggage allowance to your domestic flight as well. It is a little more expensive than booking separately, but that allowed every single one of our family member to check three 70lbs bags (United 1K member international luggage allowance) from our home city all the way to Shanghai . We also booked the luggage delivery service to deliver luggage directly to hotel. 2. Booked the Covid-19 testing (PCR, Antibody S + N protein) at TargetDX in San Jose as a designated testing agent by SF consulate, with coupon, $350 each 3. Booked hotel near SFO with airport shuttle service (this is important to us to help moving our almost 20 luggages) 4. Booked rental car to drive to testing
Day 23: Bought kids snacks, energy bars, fruit pouches and several young kids books to use on flight and quarantine time
Day 28: Flew to SFO
Day 29: Drove to TargetDX to do testing, received negative testing results on the same day. Got green code on the same day. We had a quite positive experience with TargetDX. They did a great job to draw blood from my young kids, gentle and calm. The customer support is very helpful to guide us filling the green code application form too.
Day 31: Flew to PVG
Day 32: Arrived in Shanghai. The airport testing is notoriously painful. It made me and my kids cry. So parents, be prepared . After waiting in the airport for about another 4 hours, a bus drove us to a local hotel to start quarantine.
During the quarantine, my husband and I got separate rooms as they can not accommodate all our family in one room. Fortunately we have some prepared toys and books and also later ordered some more from Taobao.com. It has been challenging to keep young kids in the same room for 14 days without your spouse helping.
There will still be many steps after the quarantine to get the work and residency permit and eventually settle down. This journey is extremely difficult and really took a lot of grit. The key for us is : be persistent and keep your US life /work going while waiting-I know this is hard too. We had wanted to go to China since the beginning of the year, and for many times thought we would never make it to China this year at all. It’s amazing we made it so far. Again, thank all the Reddit friends here for sharing and encouraging each other.