Travelers interested in visiting China may have to spend thousands of dollars on economy-class plane tickets, according to a new report.
Some flights to the country from the US are now priced around 10 times more than they used to be pre-COVID-19, according to a Monday report from the Wall Street Journal.
For example, a one-way economy ticket from San Francisco to Shanghai – which includes a layover in South Korea – can cost $4,000 or more. This does not factor in the several hundreds of dollars that travelers will need to pay to undergo mandatory quarantine at a hotel.
Meanwhile, back in 2019, one-way economy tickets for the same trip were being sold for around $400.
“I can’t imagine doing this with my family, with my kids,” James Zimmerman, a lawyer in Beijing, told the Wall Street Journal. The business-class traveler reportedly paid $12,000 to fly from San Francisco to Shanghai with a layover in Seoul.
The recent report, which cited data from travel services company Internova Travel Group, also stated that economy-class tickets to China from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport can be around six times more expensive than what they used to be back in 2019. Meanwhile, a round-trip ticket between China and places such as Germany can reportedly cost around $2,900 – around $2,500 more than what they were pre-COVID 19.
Since China continues to enforce its zero-COVID policy, flight availability to and from the East Asian country has remained low.
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