[SH Transit] More Flights, Faster Security: What Changed at Shanghai Airports This Summer

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Flying out of Shanghai on international routes got easier this year, and so did getting through security at Hongqiao.

Rebooking a flight also got more flexible – but only on a handful of domestic routes.

Since September 1, Hongqiao has increased its express-screening lanes from two standalone checkpoints, 6 and 42, to four lanes, 26–29, in Terminal 2.

Hours were extended from a fixed 5:30am-8pm schedule to match each day's flight times.

Laptops are allowed in baggage with new millimeter-wave and CT scanners, but drinks, power banks, and other things still have to be removed.

Cross-airline rebooking – switching to a flight operated by another airline without the need to check in again – has been gradually introduced at Hongqiao Airport, expanding route by route.

The service initially began with the Beijing-Shanghai and Shenzhen-Shanghai routes. In December, it was introduced on the Shanghai-Chongqing route, marking the first instance in China when passengers could switch flights after passing through security with checked baggage.

On August 30, the option became available to passengers across all fare classes, eliminating the earlier stipulation that tickets must be priced above 60 percent of the full fare.

A similar option was launched for Shanghai-Xiamen on August 28, limited to economy tickets priced at 54 percent of full fare or higher and usable only before security.

After paying the fare difference, passengers can rebook to a same-day flight on the same route operated by one of the participating airlines, with the rebooking fee waived.

The service does not currently apply to other domestic routes.

The Pudong airport also opened a childcare space of more than 110 square meters in Terminal 2 on August 26.

It includes private nursing rooms, both lying-down and standing diaper-changing stations, and a roughly 65-square-meter play area with oversized tangram puzzle pieces.

Since last year, Pudong International Airport has added flights to Belgrade, Casablanca, Geneva, Dublin, Tbilisi and Krasnoyarsk, along with new routes to Shymkent and Almaty in Kazakhstan, Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia.

It also began flying what it says is the world's longest single-leg route, from Shanghai to Buenos Aires via Auckland, currently twice a week and scheduled to increase to four times a week by the end of this year.

Shanghai's two airports also increased frequencies this summer on established routes including Barcelona, Athens, Marseille and Venice.

The Pudong airport flew to 291 destinations in 53 countries in 2025, ranking as the Asia-Pacific region's most-connected airport.

It also won an award for the biggest improvement in connectivity, according to a report the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region of Airports Council International released on September 7.

It retained the top ranking it also held in the previous year's report.

The Pudong airport's passenger traffic reached almost 85 million in 2025, with 16.2 percent of those travelers connecting through the airport rather than starting or ending their trip there.

This year's 62-day summer travel season, which ran from July 1 to August 31, saw Pudong and Hongqiao together handle 25.28 million passengers, an average of 407,000 a day, up 4.8 percent from the same period last year.

Combined flight takeoffs and landings rose 3.1 percent to 151,000. Pudong accounted for 16.394 million of those passengers and 102,000 flights; Hongqiao handled 8.887 million passengers and 49,000 flights.