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.
上周五晚，一架由达卡经停昆明飞往北京的班机由于天气原因延误了三小时，本应晚上8:45从昆明起飞的飞机因为恶劣的天气条件一直拖延到了晚上11点，这让旅客非常不高兴，一些旅客拒绝登机并要求赔偿，直到凌晨1:45，机场工作人员才劝服所有乘客登上飞机。
But that wasnt 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.
但是事情并未到此停止，乘客登机后，机场工作人员对跑道进行除冰，这又耽误了1个。之后机长又莫名关掉了空调，15分钟以后3点15分，飞机才终于起飞。据称当时有乘客在抱怨，机长听到后大叫：“你要死了么，不死就等着！”于是，有两名乘客打开了安全门，不过随即被警方逮捕。
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 youre entitled to certain protections, but they dont have any of the institutions like consumer rights groups that do this professionally.”
2013年，记者马特·希恩在描述发生在中国机场的一次骚乱时，说道：“中国人们才刚刚意识到作为消费者，有些权利是受到保护的，可是他们却没有保障消费者群体利益的专业机构。”
Airlines—and the airline industry—are a useful lens for viewing Chinas 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 centurys 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.
其实，航空公司以及整个航空业的发展很好地反映了中国的整体发展状况。《大西洋月刊》的记者同时也是航空迷的詹姆斯·法洛斯，在他的书中描述了中国是如何把长达一个世纪的航空发展过程压缩到几十年的过程的。这种发展过快的方式造成的后果除了层出不穷的各地新建机场，同时还有与此相伴的各种问题、矛盾和阵痛。
