Update | Chaos at Shenzhen airport: highest alert for delays as 200 flights cancelled, passengers scuffle with police
Red alert is year’s first for the airport as thunderstorms, lack of free aircraft parking bays cause massive flight delays and cancellations
Heavy rain and thunderstorms have caused massive flight delays and cancellations at the Shenzhen Baoan International Airport since Sunday, prompting authorities to issue the airport’s first red alert for flight delays this year.
Between midnight and 3pm on Monday, 201 flights were cancelled.
WATCH: Irate passengers scuffle with police at Shenzhen airport
But real-time flight delays had improved by Monday afternoon. At 3pm, the number of flights delayed for more than two hours was 29. The figure was 53 just two hours earlier.
On Sunday, more than 100 flights were delayed and many passengers were left stranded at the airport.
Photos and videos uploaded on social media showed chaotic scenes at the airport: passengers and police officers were seen pushing and shoving each other, lunchboxes were knocked over on the floor, and two passengers apparently tried to block a boarding gate with rows of chairs.
The airport also called passengers whose flights were scheduled to take off after 8am on Monday not to turn up at the airport. They were told to contact their airlines first.
Other airports in south-eastern China also suffered serious delays because of poor weather conditions.
The Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport upgraded its flight delay alert to orange on Sunday night.
As of 11pm Sunday, 100 flights at the airport had been cancelled and 68 delayed for more than an hour.
Heavy rains in south-eastern China have been forecasted to last for another three days.
Shenzhen airport, China’s fifth busiest hub, is notorious for its flight delays.
Last August, China’s aviation regulator slapped it with unprecedented harsh penalties for its mishandling of large-scale flight delays that triggered several incidents with “significant social impact”.
According to the regulator’s report last May, air traffic control, airlines and bad weather were the three major causes of China’s notorious flight delays, with each accounting for roughly a quarter of the nearly one million delayed flights in 2014.
