Using a Kayak to get to China

If you haven’t heard of Kayak.com, you MUST check it out. It aggregates most, if not all, airline/travel sites, saving you the hassle of going to each website to compare price. Even though our trip is a year away, I was curious to see how much flights would cost. I tried different departure and arrival cities and even made flight days and times flexible. My goal was to find the cheapest round trip flight I could for two people. What I found surprised me; Korean Air and Air Canada had the cheapest flights as well as the shortest flight time. 15 hours in a plane is much better than 25 hours. Here’s how the prices broke down as of July 23rd for one person:
Route                                 Airline        Price     hrs 1-way     stops
Sea to PEK                        Korean Air     $961          15                     1
sea to PVG                        Korean Air     $1009       15.5                  1
YVR to PEK                     Air Canada     $1080        11                     0
YVR to PVG                     Air Canada     $1080       12                     0
Seat to Pvg, pek to SEA Air Canada     $1182        18                      1
Seat to pek, pvg to SEA Air Canada     $1182        20                      1

AIRPORT CODES
SEA Seattle
PEK Beijing
PVG Shanghai
YVR Vancouver, BC

If I remember correctly, I could take a flight from Sea to YVR on Air Canada then hook up with the non-stop to China and it only cost $100 more. Totally worth it in my book. I like that Air Canada has non stop flights and the shortest flight time. The longest flight I’ve taken so far was 8 hours and I thought that was a long flight. A 12 hour flight seems excruciatingly long. You can only watch so many movies, read so many books, or sleep so many before you get “cabin fever”.

Question: What has been your experience in flying to China? Are these flight prices normal? How do you pass the time on the plane?