外媒看中國 飛機晚點與乘客鬧事

On Friday night, after a three-hour weather delay, passengers boarded a Beijing-bound flight in Dhaka, Bangladesh that had a stopover in Kunming, a provincial capital in southwest China. Scheduled to leave Kunming at 8:45 p.m., the connecting flight was delayed until 11 p.m. by additional poor weather. This did not make the passengers happy. Several refused to board and demanded compensation, but by 1:45 a.m. the airline had persuaded everyone to board.

上週五晚，一架由達卡經停昆明飛往北京的班機由於天氣原因延誤了三小時，本應晚上8:45從昆明起飛的飛機因爲惡劣的天氣條件一直拖延到了晚上11點，這讓旅客非常不高興，一些旅客拒絕登機並要求賠償，直到凌晨1:45，機場工作人員才勸服所有乘客登上飛機。

But that wasn't the end of the passengers' problems. After they boarded, the airport staff had to clear snow from the runway, which took over an hour. Finally, the plane began to taxi at 3:15 p.m.—15 minutes after the pilot inexplicably shut off the air conditioning. When passengers complained, the pilot reportedly asked: "Are you going to die soon? If not, just wait." Two passengers then burst open the emergency exits, which resulted in their arrests.

但是事情並未到此停止，乘客登機後，機場工作人員對跑道進行除冰，這又耽誤了1個。之後機長又莫名關掉了空調，15分鐘以後3點15分，飛機才終於起飛。據稱當時有乘客在抱怨，機長聽到後大叫：“你要死了麼，不死就等着！”於是，有兩名乘客打開了安全門，不過隨即被警方逮捕。

This was not the first time, even this month, that an airline passenger in China has opened an airplane's emergency exit in a non-emergency situation. More broadly, dramatic incidents of customer dissatisfaction with air travel are remarkably common in the country. After I moved to China in 2004, I witnessed the following over the course of six years, during which I took dozens of domestic flights:

這已經不是乘客第一次自己開啓安全門了，就在這個月還有一位中國乘客在非緊急情況下開啓安全門。目前在中國，乘客因不滿機場服務而造成各種問題的事件經常發生。我2004年來到中國後，在六年時間坐過的幾十次國內航班中，我親眼見到了很多這樣的事件：

•A passenger leaping on top of a check-in counter and lunging for a staff member who, for whatever reason, would not issue him a boarding pass. He was restrained before he could reach her.

一位乘客稱機場工作人員不給他辦理登機牌而跳上值機櫃臺。隨後被制服。

•A group of 25 adults standing on top of a tables positioned near a gate, waving their jackets like fans waving towels at a football game, and chanting. Their flight was delayed without explanation.

25個成年人在登機口旁邊放幾張桌子然後站上去，像球迷在看球賽時揮舞毛巾一樣，他們邊喊邊揮着手中的外套。而這樣做的原因只是因爲自己所坐的航班無故晚點。

•Two men getting into an enormous fist fight after one accused the other of cutting in line.

兩名男乘客因爲其中一人插隊而大打出手。

Flying is a miserable experience just about everywhere, and China is hardly the only country that experiences air rage. But in my experience, flying in China is worse than it is elsewhere, in many tangible ways.

其實坐飛機出行在世界上任何地方都是很痛苦的一件事，而中國也並不是唯一一個乘客有空怒症的國家。不過根據我自己的親身經歷，在中國坐飛機，確實比其它國家和地區更痛苦。

First, there are the delays. In July 2013, fewer than one in five flights departed on time from Beijing Capital Airport. The percentage of on-time flights from JFK—an airport of comparable size in the U.S.—is 65 percent. Beijing's legendary pollution plays a part in these delays, but only a small one. The real problem is that the Chinese military controls 80 percent of the country's airspace. Last July, the military ordered 12 airports across the country to reduce departures by 25 percent over a three-week period in order to accommodate large-scale army drills. Communication, too, is a problem. Airport staff often announce delays without providing an explanation, causing immense frustration among passengers who don't know what to do.

第一痛苦的就是航班延誤。據悉2013年7月，北京首都機場的每五趟航班中，準點起飛的還不到一趟。而和北京機場規模差不多的肯尼迪國際機場的航班準點率卻能達到65%。雖然北京的空氣污染問題是造成航班延誤的原因之一，但這只是一小部分原因。真正的原因在於中國軍方控制了80%的空域。去年7月份，軍方以配合數次大規模軍演爲由，要求全國12個機場在3周多的時間裏減少25%的離港航班數。還有就是溝通問題，大多數情況下機場工作人員只是宣佈航班延誤而不給出任何解釋，這讓乘客們既不知所措，又滿腹牢騷。

The journalist Matt Sheehan, who in 2013 described a Chinese airport melee in hugely entertaining fashion, told MSNBC that “Chinese people have just begun waking up to this idea that as a consumer you're entitled to certain protections, but they don't have any of the institutions like consumer rights groups that do this professionally.”

2013年，記者馬特·希恩在描述發生在中國機場的一次騷亂時，說道：“中國人們纔剛剛意識到作爲消費者，有些權利是受到保護的，可是他們卻沒有保障消費者羣體利益的專業機構。”

Airlines—and the airline industry—are a useful lens for viewing China's development as a whole. In his excellent book China Airborne, Atlantic national correspondent and aviation buff James Fallows described how China is attempting to condense a century's worth of developments in aviation into a few decades. This breakneck pace has resulted in a dazzling array of new airports scattered across the country, but has included some serious growing pains.

其實，航空公司以及整個航空業的發展很好地反映了中國的整體發展狀況。《大西洋月刊》的記者同時也是航空迷的詹姆斯·法洛斯，在他的書中描述了中國是如何把長達一個世紀的航空發展過程壓縮到幾十年的過程的。這種發展過快的方式造成的後果除了層出不窮的各地新建機場，同時還有與此相伴的各種問題、矛盾和陣痛。