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 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。

　　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:

　　这已经不是乘客第一次自己开启安全门了，就在这个月还有一位中国乘客在非紧急情况下开启安全门。目前在中国，乘客因不满机场服务而造成各种问题的事件经常发生。我2004年来到中国后，在六年时间坐过的几十次国内航班中，我亲眼见到了很多这样的事件：

　　•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.

　　一位乘客称机场工作人员不给他办理登机牌而跳上值机柜台。随后被制服。

　　•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个成年人在登机口旁边放几张桌子然后站上去，像球迷在看球赛时挥舞毛巾一样，他们边喊边挥着手中的外套。而这样做的原因只是因为自己所坐的航班无故晚点。

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

　　两名男乘客因为其中一人插队而大打出手。

　　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.

　　其实坐飞机出行在世界上任何地方都是很痛苦的一件事，而中国也并不是唯一一个乘客有空怒症的国家。不过根据我自己的亲身经历，在中国坐飞机，确实比其它国家和地区更痛苦。

　　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误。据悉2013年7月，北京首都机场的每五趟航班中，准点起飞的还不到一趟。而和北京机场规模差不多的肯尼迪国际机场的航班准点率却能达到65%。虽然北京的空气污染问题是造成航班延误的原因之一，但这只是一小部分原因。真正的原因在于中国军方控制了80%的空域。去年7月份，军方以配合数次大规模军演为由，要求全国12个机场在3周多的时间里减少25%的离港航班数。还有就是沟通问题，大多数情况下机场工作人员只是宣布航班延误而不给出任何解释，这让乘客们既不知所措，又满腹牢骚。

　　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，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 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。

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（责任编辑：何莹莹）