Angry, late, tired passengers make computers crash | Industries | Industrials, Materials & Utilities | Reuters
Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said. More than 170 passengers were due to leave Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, on three flights operated by China Southern Airlines late Monday, but the flights were cancelled due to bad weather, Xinhua news agency said. <...> The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff's "inappropriate working attitude."
Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.
More than 170 passengers were due to leave Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, on three flights operated by China Southern Airlines late Monday, but the flights were cancelled due to bad weather, Xinhua news agency said. <...>
The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff's "inappropriate working attitude."
This past January, at the start of the snow storms that crippled China over the Chinese New Year holiday season, my plane in Shanghai had to wait on the tarmac as they tried to repair the de-icing machine on a wing.
After about five hours, the German businessman sitting next to me kept mumbling, "Unmöglich, unmöglich. If this were Europe, there would already be a riot in the plane."
But I don't think he could have imagined what a real passenger riot would have looked like in China! (The Reuters story might also explain in part why not a single person on the staff -- after we were finally told to get off the plane -- was brave enough to make an announcement to the crowd of bewildered and seething passengers, which of course made them just more and more frustrated and angry.)
Although Chinese customer service is continually improvements, there is clearly a long way to go. Cynicism is intellectual treason.
In China, Terminal 5 would have been gutted at its opening. Instead people mostly sat around in a depressive way and complained to the occasional camera crews, with spontaneous fits of sobbing when nothing else was happening.
British timidity has a direct influence on UK politics. We put up with a lot of crap we should really be more assertive about.
It's one of the defining characteristics of the British that we don't do riots any more.
We also tend to note that airports are guarded by guys with machine guns. Rioting in such circumstances might have more consequences than usual. Plus, the bars were shut and we don't do riots without lager. keep to the Fen Causeway
It's all showing-off, although of course if you get hit in the teeth with a canon it's quite painful in itself. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
