A FORMER county official in Yunnan Province, whose public breakdown at an airport in February went viral on the Internet, was sentenced to six months in prison Tuesday.

    The People’s Court of Guandu District in Kunming also sentenced Yan Linkun to a further 1-year suspended sentence for a temper-tantrum at Kunming Changshui Airport.

    A video of the incident made headlines and has led to other clips depicting China’s bad-tempered air travelers taking out their frustrations with air travel services.

    Yan was previously expelled from his post as a county political adviser and lost his job as vice chairman of a Guangdong subsidiary of Yunnan Mining. He was forced to pay damages and returned to the airport to apologize, Kunming Daily reported.

    Yan and his family of four were due to fly from Kunming to Guangzhou on Feb. 19. After having breakfast near the departure gate, they asked to board their flight just 20 minutes before the scheduled departure. They were told that the gate had already been closed. Yan had to buy a ticket for a later flight, which he again missed, sparking his violent tantrum.

    Yan’s infamous incident was an example of airport rage in China. Only 18.3 percent of the 22,019 flights departing from Beijing Capital International Airport were on time in June, the U.S.-based data provider for air travel FlightStats said in a report last month.

    (SD-Agencies)