Route brief · SHA → JNB
Shanghai → Johannesburg
$820
round-trip · too little price history on this route to compare
Oct 14 – Oct 21 · 7 nights
Etihad1 stop
Cached fare — the booking search re-prices live before you pay.
Destination briefJNBJohannesburgAfrica’s busiest airport and the road to Kruger — most people connect, some stay for the best museums on the continent.Best windowMar–May · Sep–NovAirportsO. R. Tambo (JNB) · Lanseria (HLA)All routes into JohannesburgWhen this route gets cheap.
Best time to be in Johannesburg: Mar–May · Sep–Nov. Fare history for this route is still thin, so we make no seasonal call yet.
The cheapest itinerary we are tracking makes one stop and takes about 17.5 hours outbound, on a 7-night trip — ticketed under Etihad, which on a connecting fare need not operate every leg. At $820 for 11,781 km each way, that works out to about $35 per 1,000 km flown. That is below the $40 typical of ultra-long-haul fares here. Across the 23 departure cities we track at a similar distance from Johannesburg, this fare ranks 8th — 32% above the $621 from Stockholm. That puts it in the cheaper half of the 29 routes of similar length we watch out of Shanghai, where the middle fare is $891. We have 2 months of cached prices for this route so far — not enough to call a fare cheap or expensive, so we publish the price without a percentage.
The 2 days we hold a cached fare for
Tap a date → live search
The median cached fare across this calendar is 27% lower than when tracking began on Aug 8 — $1,151 then versus $845 now, across 7 recorded snapshots. This is a calendar-level trend, so an individual deal above can be lower. The lowest single day we have seen here is $796, on Nov 12.
These are the only days we have a cached price for on this route so far — not the only days it flies. The search above covers any date.
Route facts
- Airports
- Pudong (PVG) · Hongqiao (SHA) ↔ O. R. Tambo (JNB) · Lanseria (HLA)
- Flight time
- ~17.5 hours outbound
- Distance
- ~11,781 km each way
- Airlines on the board
- Etihad
- Itineraries
- Connections on current fares
- Best months to visit
- Mar–May · Sep–Nov
SHA → JNB, answered.
How far in advance should I book SHA → Johannesburg?
We do not publish a number for this, because we cannot measure it yet. Answering it honestly means watching the same departure date on this route over many weeks as it approaches, and that archive is still filling up — so any "book N days ahead" figure here would be borrowed from somewhere else rather than measured. See /guides/what-moves-a-flight-price/ for the levers we can measure.
Are there nonstop flights from Shanghai to Johannesburg?
The current cheapest fares involve a connection, ticketed under Etihad. Nonstop options exist on many dates at higher prices — check the live search for your exact dates.
Are these prices guaranteed?
No — these are cached fares found on real searches (this one on September 1). Airlines reprice constantly, so the booking search re-checks the live price before you pay. Fresher finds are far more likely to still be available.
Next step
Sleeping in Johannesburg?
Lock the flight first — then compare stays for Oct 14 – Oct 21 · 7 nights.
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Missed it?
Cached fares expire. This route has a feed of its own — follow it and the next SHA → JNB drop reaches you as soon as we find it.
Follow SHA → JNB