A recent news story that "two female passengers attempted to board a flight forcibly and caused delays in a Shanghai airport" has resulted in a heated debate. However, according to reporters from Xinhua News Agency, things were not quite the way some media have reported.

According to the Police Department of the airport, the two female passengers planned to take a Hainan Airlines flight from Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing. However, the flight was canceled due to crew issues. Hainan Airlines therefore moved some passengers to CA1518, an Air China flight. Air China accepted the arrangement and issued boarding passes to those passengers, the two women included. Flight CA1518 was now overbooked, but Air China did not realize this until they finished the rescheduling procedures. When they did, they invalidated the two female passengers’ boarding passes in their operation system but failed to inform them of the change in arrangements.

The two female passengers, who had been waiting in the airport from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. became anxious and spoke some angry words but did not take any improper action. Airport police arrived before any escalation of the situation and sent the two to the police station for investigation and admonition.

These two women paid their money, had their tickets endorsed, but instead of taking their flight, ended up in the police station. Their unhappy experience has aroused sympathy from the public as well as disappointment regarding Air China’s conduct.

Air China has finally admitted that a "communication problem" occurred between the airline and the two passengers which led to the boarding passes being invalidated, and says details are still "under investigation".

Throughout the incident, Air China has neither engaged in any proper introspection nor apologized to the customers. Instead, in the face of its management problems, it has begun to play word games. As a major state-owned enterprise, it is shameful that the airline should simply ignore the lawful rights of its customers. What was the "communication problem"? Was there a machine malfunction, a management loophole, or a failure to focus on the principle of people-first? Whichever might prove to be the case, we hope Air China will soon give us an answer.

The article is edited and translated from《国航，你欠乘客一个真诚的道歉》, source: Xihuanet

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