I've got a business trip coming up next year which will require me to fly from New York State to Shanghai. I have a lot of flexibility regarding what airport I leave from. What I would like to do is shorten the length of my flight into Shanghai. What European city would offer the shortest flying time into Shanghai ? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

For time, you are better off considering going west as it is shorter. For example nonstops from Newark and Detroit are about 15 hours.

To go east from NYC via London and Zurich it is about 21.5 and 20.5 hours respectively including time to change planes.

In both cases you would have to add time to get to your US gateway.

Non-stop United EWR-PVG. Shortest overall travel time by a bunch.

West is not always shorter. Article in US News that was on Yahoo today...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/worlds...211655905.html

Turns out West is not the best. I've done the LAX-Singapore flight. Way too long on an airplane.

I've also done the SFO to HKG, 2 hour layover then to Singapore.

From HKG to Shanghai is about 2.5 hours.

If it's 16 hours from the East Coast and 14 hours from the West Coast to HKG.... Do the math.

EWR->PVG is neither west or east. The flight goes north to the North Pole, then straight south through Siberia to China.

rkkwan - I guess I was mostly responding to NoFlyZone's comments.

Over is better than West. Something about a jet stream....