Martin Li

    martin.mouse@163.com

    A MEMBER of ground staff for an air company in Chengdu, Sichuan, who only gave her surname as Qiu, is still troubled by an incident earlier this year in which one of her female colleagues was beaten by a passenger during a flight delay.

    “The angry passenger turned a deaf ear to my colleague’s repeated explanation that the delay was a result of bad weather,” Qiu told Shenzhen Daily at weekend.

    Chinese passengers are prone to losing their temper at airports because of seemingly inevitable delays to flights.

    China’s major airports have the worst flight delays in the world, according to an earlier report from FlightStats, a U.S.-based travel industry monitor.

    Airports in Beijing and Shanghai come bottom for punctual flights. Additionally, according to the report eight of the 10 worst-performing Asian airlines in terms of delays are Chinese carriers.

    In the latest effort to improve the situation the Civil Aviation Administration of China started from July 18 implementing an unrestricted take-off measure at eight airports in seven cities including Shenzhen.

    Who’s to blame?

    While frequent flight delays have been drawing an increasing number of complaints from passengers, the responsible parties seem to be passing the buck.

    The National Civil Aviation Administration said last month that military activities are responsible for just seven percent of flight delays in China.

    An administration official added that 42 percent of delays were due to carrier operations, followed by air traffic control procedures at 26 percent and inclement weather at 21 percent.

    Air companies are often blamed for flight delays however, they said that each delay makes them suffer economically.

    Chairman of China Eastern Airline, Liu Shaoyong, said that each one minute of delay to a flight taking off means an increase in operation costs of more than 1,000 yuan (US$160), besides this air companies also have to pay after service compensation to passengers.

    The air company employee, Qiu, said that the number of daily flights is on the rise, but air space open to civil flights is still limited, meaning planes have to wait in line before take-off.

    “Most passengers are not aware of the limitations on air space, and become used to laying the blame on air companies,” said Qiu.

    According to Chinese media reports the military is responsible for managing air space with military use of the air space always given priority. Opening up more air space for civil flights would be of a concern to the military’s best interests.

    However, the Civil Aviation Administration said that only by opening more of the air space to civilian aircraft can more planes fly in the air at the same time, thus ensuring increased punctuality.

    The United States is home to between 200,000 and 300,000 aircrafts and more than 10,000 airports. In contrast there are only about 10,000 aircrafts and less than 1,000 airports in China, according to a Xinhua report July 29.

    Airports in cities like Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Sanya all witnessed a slowing in the growth of the number of passengers last year, which according to Xinhua was mainly a result of limited air space.

    In addition, analysts have attributed flight delays to the multiple management of air companies, airports and air control departments. Air companies are managed by State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, whilst local governments manage airports. Air space is in the control of military.

    Improvements needed

    Deputy vice chairman of the Beijing Aviation Law Institute, Zhang Qihuai, said that the Civil Aviation Administration plays a key role in addressing flight delays.

    The administration has failed to provide measures for improvement or industry wide compensation standards for delayed passengers, leading to air companies using bad weather or air traffic control as an excuse for all delays, according to Zhang.

    The Civil Aviation Administration is considering a standardized national compensation plan for delayed flights in an effort to appease passengers grumbling about the country’s poor flight punctuality, according to China Daily report July 16.

    The plan will likely follow the European Union’s model that bases compensation on the length of the delay in hours, which is expected to reduce the mass claim disputes in cases of flight delays.

    Currently, air companies are allowed to set their own compensation standards.

    “I was only given a bottle of water and lunch when my flight was delayed for more than three hours. However three hours of my time is worth more to me than that,” said a resident in Futian District, Shenzhen, who only gave his surname as Zeng.

    “It seems the waste of passengers’ time is not a big deal in the eyes of air companies. Do we have to get used to a delay?” complained Zeng.

    Latest measure

    It is still too early to tell whether in the name of air traffic control removing restrictions on planes taking off at airports in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xi’an and Kunming will work.

    An airplane captain in Shenzhen, Li, said that what causes frequent flight delays is resource insufficiency, and not restrictions on the increase in the number of flights.

    “Shenzhen’s airport is only able to let one flight take off every two minutes, or 30 flights per hour. However, at least 40 flights wait to take off every hour at the airport, so delay is inevitable,” said Li.

    Another Shenzhen resident, Liu Yong, told Shenzhen Daily on Thursday that the airport should have more facilities, including runways.

    “In addition the airport’s management staff should be better trained, they need be able to communicate with passengers more effectively. Even when a flight is delayed, they should have the ability to appease anxious passengers. Only unrestricted take-off is not enough,” said Liu.

    According to Thursday’s report by the South China Morning Post, an aviation expert based in Hong Kong, who asked not to be named, said it was a common practice at many big international airports to ask planes to circle before getting landing clearance. But he said “This puts great pressure on air traffic control — and the mainland’s [civilian] air traffic control is not among the best.”

    “They also have to deal with heavy interference from the military, so there could be safety concerns. This could well be an experiment by the government to squeeze efficiency,” he said.