It was a beautiful, not so humid in the early hours of April 19, 2018. After an awesome weeklong tour of China, my wife and I arrived at Beijing airport by a Chinese made impressive SUV to board our return journey flight to Hong Kong by Air China which was scheduled to depart by noon. Check-in was smooth, got exit seal of immigration and passed through stringent security check and proceeded to the particular boarding gate while appreciating the size, beauty and cleanliness of the airport.
After an hour of our arrival Air China staff came to the gate, but made no announcements! As departure time was getting closer, passengers approached them to know why they had not opened the gate. They nodded their head and asked to wait. Thirty minutes passed the scheduled departure time, no progress. After one hour when we questioned them, they smiled and denied any issues with standard reply of “boarding will be announced any moment”. Two, 3 and 4 hours passed and all the passengers were surrounding the staff and shouted at them. They changed their reply stating they are still awaiting OK from ATC!
After full 5 hours, they announced that flight got cancelled due to ATC denial to fly and asked all the passengers to go to immigration to cancel the exit stamp and proceed to 4th floor counters to get confirmation to fly by next available flights! We queried about food and accommodation till the next flight for which pat came the reply “you have to manage on your own!” Reply for further queries about compensation for missing the connecting flight was “we can’t do anything, better you go to 4th floor faster for if you delay here arguing you may not get next day morning, but noon eve or the day after as all the flights in line were almost full.” By the time our turn came it was 11 pm and we were told next available flight with confirmed seat can be only a day after! After several pleas we were asked to approach counter at 5 am and tried our luck for any cancellation!
As there were not enough seats in the waiting hall we spent entire night sitting on the floor near a pillar with hardly any food. We took some pastry, white rice and broccoli for which we paid 5 star rates from our pocket. Next day at 4 am we were at the counter and after an hour of breathless wait we got confirmation to fly. When we came out of immigration and security we got hardly 10 minutes to arrive at the boarding gate which was a 15-minute walk. My wife and I ran non-stop for 10 minutes and somehow got boarded.
Beijing experience was unbelievable and unforgettable. While sitting on the flight my thought process was comparing my experiences of missing flights and getting accommodated in 5-star hotels even for a 4-hour delay by erstwhile Indian Airlines! Despite such royal treatment there were complaints and reporting in newspapers about inefficiency of Indian carriers! To my surprise there is nothing about Beijing incident either in newspapers or in Google.
Are we enjoying too much of democratic comforts while comparing governing arrogance of few other countries?
