‘Free’Meals and Riots - Air Travel in China

‘Free’Meals and Riots - Air Travel in China
Feb 16, 2009 By Fred Dintenfass , eChinacities.com

For expats living in China air travel becomes a big part of our lives. It’s perfectly natural to moan and groan about it but I always feel a little guilty about the 14 hour flight from the US when I remember that lack of direct flights and transit visa regulations caused my Argentinean friend’s first trip to China to last over 40 hours.

Flying within China is a mixed bag. My experiences flying domestically have generally been great in the air but not so hot on the ground. Despite their economic problems, you are still treated like a human on China’s domestic flights. When you fly from Beijing to Shanghai you get fed, you’ll probably get a snack as well. The seats are roomier and the stewardess haven’t yet descended into surliness or forced over the top cheerfulness. Although they have to practice by gripping chopsticks between their teeth, the smiles on Chinese stewardesses don’t seem chipped out of concrete or fractured around the edges.

Sure the food on Chinese planes might not be extraordinary – good food on an airplane is a little too much to ask for – but at least it’s there. My girlfriend just flew from Los Angeles to New York – an almost six hour tip across America – and there was not so much as a single free peanut.

At midnight in LAX, about to board a plane for the 13 hour flight back to Beijing, the only nourishment available in the terminal was a box of chocolates purchased in the duty-free store. The only place still open - despite the two or three hundred people waiting to board - the duty-free only served passengers leaving the country (two young Korean women headed to Hawaii found their attempt to buy several giant cartons of Marlboros rejected) and if you didn’t want to drink liquor you were going thirsty.

Admittedly, the situation in China’s airports is not as good as the experience in the air. I once experienced a four hour riot in Shanghai’s Pudong Airport when our flight was delayed due to ‘weather’. It was a surreal experience - the police showed up three hours after the shouting started and then proceeded to stand by while angry passengers manhandled airline personnel. I asked the rather young looking policeman, why they were even there if they weren’t going to do anything.

“They haven’t committed any crimes,” he announced smugly, as a tall businessman shoved his way behind the counter and started screaming into the white airport phone connected to the desk. The young peace officer seemed unphased by my blunt challenging of his usefulness. Later, when he walked over to me I expected some sort of trouble, but instead of rebuking me, he complimented my Chinese and spoke wistfully of the freedom and weaponry American police had to enforce the law.

 

 

In an American airport several of the protesters would have been, deservedly, tased at this point and they never would have served us food and a canned beverage like China Eastern did. I was quite sympathetic to the airline until I realized the storm delaying our departure had passed hours ago and they were apparently hanging onto this reason as a way to keep from paying us compensation.

I’m not sure how true the logic of this last reason was – it was explained to me by another passenger and may have lost something in my understanding of their Chinese – but I did lose patience when they tricked us onto the plane and locked the doors. By the time a grown man with children started kicking at the airplane door in attempt to break us out I become tiredly disgusted with every aspect of the situation and when they ordered us off the plane, because one passenger had changed flights and they needed to re-check the cabin for security, I refused to deplane. I expected to be thrown off but instead a stewardess trundled up the aisle and offered us peanuts. Sandwiches, she promised, would follow shortly. We were the only people on the plane.

China’s aviation sector is facing problems as the global economy contracts and the Olympics weren’t as good for them as expected. The government has halted the expansion of the industry and frozen all plane purchasing until 2010. I hope that during these troubled times the Chinese airlines continue to make room in their hearts and budgets for pretzels and Chex Mix. And – I never thought I’d say this – some more aggressive airport security personnel wouldn’t hurt either.

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