Chinese travellers angry over flight delay slap face and throw food at airline employee
Photographs that reportedly show Chinese passengers beating up a member of an airline’s check-in staff after becoming irritated by a flight delay have triggered heated online discussion on the mainland.
The China Youth Daily reported that Capital Airlines’ flight from Beijing to Changsha was delayed on Sunday night because of bad weather.
Several passengers became angry about the delay and reportedly humiliated a women working for the airline at Beijing Capital International Airport after their demand to meet the airline’s representative was rejected, the article said.
One angry woman reportedly threw the contents of her takeaway meal box over the employee while a man was said to have slapped the employee’s face, the article said.
The man then shouted, “What’s wrong with beating you up?”, and then smashed a few objects at the entrance to the airport boarding gate, the report said.
The newspaper did not say whether police had been called to investigate the matter.
The report aroused much debate on weibo, the mainland microblogging website, with many people’s comments suggesting that both the airline and passengers were to blame.
“Airlines always use the weather as an excuse,” one weibo blogger said. “In fact, there can be many reasons such as the malfunction of the aircraft, or the flight paths being occupied, poor organisation, and sometimes even waiting for senior officials to arrive.”
Another person wrote: “The passengers should really apologise. The airline’s poor service doesn’t mean staff deserve such humiliation.”
