Unruly passenger behaviour regularly makes headlines in Chinese media as air travel booms, with unfamiliar or drunken travellers even sometimes trying to open doors mid-flight

 

Beijing (AFP) - After a series of flight disruptions by angry or unruly passengers, Chinese media on Tuesday revealed a new menace to air travel in the country: fighting pilots.

Two of them came to blows in the cockpit of a China United Airlines (CUA) flight in June, the official news agency Xinhua reported.

Few details -- such as the route the budget airline was operating, or how many people were on board -- were available.

The incident only came to light when it was mentioned in passing in a Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announcement of CUA's punishment -- a 10 percent cut in its flying hours and a ban on new routes, Xinhua said.

The airline sought to play down concerns, saying the pilots only had "some physical contact" due to a misunderstanding and denying it escalated into a fight, the report said.

But CUA said the pair had been grounded for six months, Xinhua added.

 

The industry also scores poorly for customer satisfaction, with constant flight delays -- airspace is controlled by the military -- topping the list of complaints.

In January Chinese police detained 25 angry passengers who opened aircraft emergency exit doors before take-off after their flight was delayed by snow.

The previous month, a budget flight from Thailand to China was forced to return to Bangkok after a Chinese passenger threw hot water at a cabin attendant.

CUA has had a string of safety incidents this year, including three in June and July that "seriously violated regulations", Xinhua cited the CAAC as saying.

In one of the country's most high-profile air accidents to be blamed on human error, the pilot of a Henan Airlines flight that crashed in 2010, killing 44 people, was jailed for three years for trying to land when he could not properly see the runway.

http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-flights-hit-disturbance-fighting-pilots-110630522.html