HONG KONG, Nov 4 — The Chinese aviation authorities and meteorologists who artificially induced heavy snowfall in Beijing have come under fire for causing flight delays and leaving tens of thousands of travellers stranded at the airport, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday.
Questions have been raised about the communication breakdown between the aviation authorities and municipal weather gurus who seeded clouds to bring winter weather to the Chinese capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, the South China Morning Post said.
Snowstorms since three days ago have led to flights being repeatedly delayed and cancelled at Beijing Capital International Airport. Passengers were stranded for hours at a time inside planes or in the terminals with little or no information about when they would finally take off.
Gu, one of the mainland’s top ‘Go’ chess players, was one of the victims. It took him over 18 hours to travel from Beijing to Shanghai, leaving him with just a couple of hours to rest before competing against an equally exhausted Kong Jie, whose flight had been delayed for almost 10 hours.
Gu arrived at the Beijing airport at 7am three days ago for an 11am flight to Shanghai and was told to board another flight at about 1pm.
If that flight had departed on schedule, Gu would have made it to the pre-match press conference at 4pm. But after sitting in the plane for five hours, an exhausted Gu was told to transfer to another one. He sat in that plane for another two hours without any explanation from the airline on why it was not taking off, according to a report in the Titan Sports newspaper.
Gu was finally placed on a third plane to Shanghai which took off an hour later. But after arriving in Shanghai, he found that his baggage had not travelled with him. When the match started two afternoons ago, Gu still had not received his luggage. He lost the match.
According to flight information website feeyo.com, 523 flights had been delayed or cancelled at the Beijing airport by three midnights ago. Flights gradually returned to normal two days afo under a clear sky.
An elderly couple travelling from Beijing to Guangzhou on Air China spent the whole of three days ago at the airport. They arrived at 9am for an 11am flight, and were moved on and off planes until they were eventually asked to go to a nearby hotel at 2am. They left Beijing on Monday afternoon at about 4pm — after a delay of almost 30 hours.
The scarce information available from the airport authorities and airline ground crew or flight attendants exposed a lack of communication between the aviation and meteorological authorities, the Post said.
A Xinhua report said the snowfall had been partially induced when hundreds of snow-making rockets were fired into the sky four days ago. The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from three mornings and kept falling for half the day.
The phone hotline of Air China, the Beijing- based flagship airline, was jammed three days ago, while its website provided no updates on the status of flights.
Liu Weimin at the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China said aviation law favoured airlines in cases of service disputes caused by extreme weather.
“Airlines are not obliged to provide free food or lodging to passengers if problems are caused by severe weather conditions,” he told the Post.
But he said: “The lifeline of airlines is service... If you fail to serve people with your heart, there is no doubt customers will give you up when other options emerge.” — The Straits Times
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