If you’re like me, when you land in a new airport, one of the first things you do is look for free wifi. Now what frustrates me the most at an airport, or anywhere as a matter of fact, is how 1) there isn’t free wifi and 2) they make you jump through hoops to connect. Free wifi is becoming more and more an expected service and the good news is that the Shanghai Pudong International Airport is one of those airports. That said, it is a little trickier than most places to connect which is why I decided to put together this quick post.
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Methods of connecting to #AirportPVG-Free-WiFi
The wireless network or SSID that you’re looking for on your phone is #AirportPVG-Free-WiFi and once you’re connected, this will pop up.
If you look at the bottom, there are two options for logging in. The first method is by SMS and the second is by a special username and password.
Let me help you walkthrough both methods so that you won’t be without data when you land in Shanghai.
Method 1: via SMS
This method only works if the SIM card you have in your phone can connect to a cellular network in China when you land. I, for one, had issues primarily because I realized after the fact that I hadn’t enabled international roaming but that’s another story.
I would say that this is the easiest method because all you have to do is pop in your phone number and with any luck, you’ll receive a text message with the code you can use to log in.
Not much explanation is needed here as this is pretty easy to do.
Method 2: via Username and Password
You’d think this is easy but especially if this is your first time in Shanghai and you don’t speak the language, it’ll be trickier than you think.
Let’s break this up into two parts: arrival and departure.
Arriving at PVG
If you’re landing in Shanghai, you’re going to have to wait until after customs and picking up your bags until you can get a username and password. This means only when you go out into the public arrivals hall will you be able to start this process.
Thing is, they don’t exactly have an information desk for you to go to. In the name of automation and convenience, they’ve actually installed machines near the door you exit.
Once you’re at the machine, change the language to English and follow the instructions that will lead you to scanning your passport below. Once your passport has been scanned, a slip will be printed from the machine. Use this username and password to log into the wifi.
Departing PVG
Now if you’re leaving Shanghai, it’s a little different which is why I wanted to highlight this new set of steps.
Similar to arrivals, you’re going to need to look for a machine to print out one of those slips. The machine you’re looking for is between gates 75 and 77. It’s a little hard to spot unless you know what you’re looking for.
This machine is actually a little different from the arrivals one (don’t ask me why) and it’s a console that seems to do a bunch of different things. I couldn’t figure out how to switch it to English so I’ve taken a sequence of photos to show you what you need to tap on to get things going.
Ultimately, what you want to do is get the machine to scan your passport. Once approved, it’ll print out a slip with the username and password and that’s how you’ll be able to log in.
The one thing to be careful of is that I had a lot of trouble scanning my passport. It’s a larger glass scanner and what I learned after numerous attempts is that you have to place your passport at the top left corner of the scanner. Otherwise, it won’t be able to successfully read your passport.
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Well that’s it! Hopefully you’ll be able to get on the wifi at PVG. If anything, ask the help desk at the airport for “free wifi” and they should be able to point you in the right direction. Best of luck!
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Hotels: Our go-to is Booking.com because they have the best inventory of properties including hotels and B&Bs plus they have their Genius tier discounts. Expedia is also worth using especially with their One Key rewards program which is basically like cash. The exception is Asia where Agoda always has the best prices. Always do a quick check on TripAdvisor as well.
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Nice article. I was at Shanghai PVG airport just few days ago. I had lot of trouble with the free wifi passport scanner. First, as you noted, most of the time passport scanning will error out. You need to place passport “just so” and it will finally give you the free wifi passowrd. But this password seem to expire in matter of minutes (for registering new devices). So if you have multiple devices, you will have to scan passport multiple times. But what’s the worst is that almost all popular non-chinese websites are banned in China. Even innocuous websites like booking.com, kayak.com is banned and only chinese websites are available. I can’t read chinese and could not find any non-chinese hotel booking website which was accessible. So I had to spend the night at the airport. And no, nordvpn with obfuscated servers cannot get past the great china fireall anymore.
Oh man, it’s definitely gotten worse it sounds like. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Yeah, a trip to China means you pretty much can’t be productive there at all and you definitely want to have all of your bookings sorted out before you go.
Super-cool post, man. Thanks a lot for the hints.
You’re welcome. Enjoy!
Hi, I was wondering are the gates 75-77 located in the international departures? Also does the wifi have an expiration time? Or can we use it as long as we want? I’m only curious because I have a 6 hour layover in a couple weeks :(
Yes this is for the international departures location. In terms of duration of the wifi, I don’t believe they expire within 6 hours but I can’t remember for sure. I think it’s good for the full day but I could be wrong.
HI there, thanks for sharing the above info. May I know how about transit in PVG? Any machine for me to access while awaiting for my next flight? Many Thanks. :)
Do you mean in terms of accessing a computer while at the airport for your next flight? As far as I know, I haven’t seen any open machines that you can use. Your best bet is a lounge but otherwise I don’t think there are any free computers to use.
Great advice Will! Will try it out next time I fly through SHA.
Thanks!! Should be pretty easy to do once you know what to look for :)
But you can’t access Facebook and gmail if you don’t have a especial device
For that you’ll need a VPN!
and if that screen does not “pop-up”? 😡
If it doesn’t pop up, I’d recommend going to your browser and going to any website. My go-to is usually tsn.ca but you can try something like starbucks.com and hopefully that’ll trigger a redirect.
woww excellent, this article is very useful for everyone who would like to go to Shanghai. as we know, this city (mostly in China, not Shanghai only). it is not quite easy to find or use English very well
I know! That’s why when I figured out how to get wifi at the airport, I thought this would be useful for travellers.
Amazing walkthrough I will be passing though pvg at the end of February.
You’re welcome! Should be pretty easy to do once you know where to go :)