BEIJING: Minutes before a flight packed with 50 passengers was scheduled to take off from southern China’s Guangzhou city to Beijing, blackouts twice plunged the cabin into darkness. There was no air.

“We were very worried. That was very abnormal, but they didn’t offer a good explanation,” said Yan Hong, a nurse travelling with her sister, daughter and niece.

With Yan’s sister as their leader, the passengers demanded to be allowed off the plane on the runway, but the cabin crew refused.

Elderly female passengers tried to wrestle their way off while a male flight atten-

dant threatened to hit Yan’s sister. After a 10-hour standoff, police called to the scene allowed the passengers to disembark.

“What upset us most was the airline staff’s attitude,” said Yan, who along with the others spent the night at a hotel paid for by the airline. They flew out on another airline the next day, refusing to travel on the same carrier.

That flight in May was one of about 3,000 on an average day in China, but it epitomizes the growing pains of China’s aviation industry as the country marches from train-dominated to plane-centered mass transportation.

In the rush to cash in on the flying craze, airlines have put money and effort into building airports, buying and maintaining airplanes, and improving safety, but customers and state media complain that not enough attention is paid to service.

Among the problems, about one in five flights nationwide is delayed or cancelled, according to the government-run Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

“Passengers’ complaints to airlines about flight delays have become one of the main problems facing China’s aviation industry,” said the Beijing Morning Post.

In one high-profile case, a group of passengers on a flight delayed for hours were so angry they staged a protest outside the airline’s office, eventually forcing the company to compensate them.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that resources are struggling to keep up with demand as an average of 300,000 people fly each day, and up to 400,000 during peak periods, with the number of passengers and new routes rising sharply.—AFP