Hello from Shanghai! I live here and fly back to North America every year. We have flown China Eastern for domestic Chinese flights, but prefer Dragonair or Cathay Pacific. Better food, more polite flight attendants, and attendants speak better English. China Eastern does tend to be cheaper though.
It’s not terrible, just expect Chinese-quality service.
With regards to an 8-hour layover in shanghai...We take the Maglev to and from the airport, and the subway all over the city as our primary mode of transportation.
8 hours layover is tight if you want to leave Pudong airport. Because Pudong airport is so huge, it will take about 15 minutes of taxi-ing after you land to get to your gate. Then it will take about half an hour to clear customs. If you want the 72-hour transit visa, you will need to go to a different counter to get the visa after you land (not sure how long that takes since I have a work visa and don’t need the transit visa).
It’s about a 5 minute walk to the Maglev station, then a 10 minute ride to Longyang Road metro station, which is not downtown. It’s kind of suburb-ish. The train only goes at 400 km /hr on sunny days between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM-ish. Otherwise, it goes at 300 km/hr, which is still pretty fast. The difference is an 8 min ride versus a 10 min ride. Also, the maglev only runs during the day, from around 5:30 am to 10:00 pm-ish.
From Longyang Road station, to get to the touristy areas, you will need to take a 20-30 minute subway ride depending on the site you want to visit. This means you will need RMB so you can purchase subway tickets. The attendants at the subway stations do not speak English.
All told, it will probably take you at least 1.5 hours to get out of the airport to the fun parts of the city. Then you will need to budget time to check back in. Security at the airport was tightened last year due to a bomb threat at Pudong airport. That means you need to plan to arrive early so you can go through the metal detector, and then go through security, and then go through another security checkpoint. If you need to check in again, the lines will likely be long, especially for China Eastern as they fly to many different cities and have many flights per day. We typically arrive at the airport 2.5-3 hours before our flight.
Hanging out at Pudong airport is not bad. It has several restaurants, free, fast WiFi and generally comfy seats. Some of the staff can speak English but not all of them and the quality of their English varies. If you do happen to be stranded, you will probably be able to find at least one staff who can speak some English.