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You can currently book flights in Business Class to Shanghai from Prague on Hainan Airlines for as little as £867 Return!
That’s obviously a pretty good price, but what’s great about these fares is that availability is wide open all year, including peak School Holiday times:
You can find the prices very easily using either Kayak or ITA Matrix.
If you don’t fancy Hainan for any reason, Swiss have some fairly decent prices too at the moment from ~ £1200.
I also managed to find flights for about £1200 on some dates with Finnair from Dublin, and ~ £1330 from Manchester and London.
Availability at those prices is considerably patchier though, and personally, I’d rather save the cash and give Hainan a spin (largely for the sake of curiosity!) anyway. It’s also worth pointing out that Prague is a tremendous city for a short break in itself (and relatively cheap/easy to get to), so a quick stopover there en route isn’t exactly a great hardship.
What is Hainan Airlines Business Class like?
Excellent question!
Honest answer: I’ve never flown with them so don’t really know.
That said, although this may perhaps be the first time you’ve ever even heard of Hainan Airlines, they are actually rated as one of only nine Skytrax 5-star airlines in the world – so theoretically in the same league as Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Etihad, Qatar etc.
You can read more about Hainan Airlines Business Class here, or check out a characteristically detailed (and excellent) review over at OMAAT (note that is a review of Hainan’s Boeing 787 Business Class, not of the Airbus A330 they use on the Prague route. The Business Class cabin on the A330s is actually better, featuring just 4 seats across in a staggered 1-2-1 layout).
Bottom Line
Even including a little stay in Prague, you should still be able to effectively snag a Business Class to Shanghai for ~£1,000, which is a very solid deal.
I’m intrigued by Hainan Airlines, and Business Class on the A330 actually looks very good!
https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/how-to-earn-miles/airline-partners/hainan-airlines.aspx
It’s worth adding that you can earn miles from our favourite FF programme. However you are flying via Beijing. Nonetheless you’re earning over 20K Alaska miles for the return itinerary!
The connection in Beijing makes you ineligible for the72 / 144 hour transit visa on arrival, which reminds me to write the blog post about that…
Superb point! – I’d completely forgotten about the Hainan/Alaska link. I know we are both pretty heavy with our Alaska valuations, but whichever you look at it 20k is definitely worth a fair chunk.