China’s fast growing air travel market is the world’s second biggest. But when it comes to flight delays, it’s No 1.
Shanghai resident Chen Chen learned the hard way on a recent business trip when she flew out of Inner Mongolia about 24 hours later than scheduled. Her evening flight to Beijing was delayed until the next day and when staff couldn’t give her a departure time, she bought a ticket on another airline. That flight left late too.
“That’s the worst experience I’ve ever had,” said Chen, a modelling agent. “I was numb when I reached Beijing. No words. I just wanted to kiss the ground.”
Chen’s ordeal was typical of the problems faced by many air travellers in China. Delays are so frequent and lengthy that scenes of travellers smashing up check-in desks, brawling with staff or storming the tarmac have verged on the commonplace.
According to official figures, 75 per cent of China’s flights left on time last year. But private surveys paint a different picture. A recent report by travel industry monitor FlightStat found that just 18 per cent of flights at Beijing’s airport left on time in June, the lowest proportion among 35 airports worldwide, with Shanghai second at 29 per cent. Eight of the 10 worst performing airlines were mainland Chinese carriers.
The chronic delays underscore the challenges for China’s domestic carriers as they strive to meet booming passenger demand. They face two longstanding problems that won’t be easy to fix. The first and biggest is the powerful military’s tight control of airspace, which analysts say leaves as little as 20 per cent of the country’s airspace for civilian traffic.