Very well put, Britomart.
Hainan Airlines May Fly Beijing-San Jose; Opening Exit Doors Now a Trend
I wish Hainan Airlines were a member of Star Alliance. If they were, I would fly them all the time. Their ambition is admirable, and as carriers go, there are far, far worse.
It's not enough that they've announced new routes to Montreal, Tel Aviv, and Havana (via Montreal). Now Hainan is applying to fly to San Jose.
This is a really interesting and potentially exciting move. For those readers not familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area, it is served by two major airports: San Francisco International (SFO), which is an embarrassment to the city it serves, and San Jose International, about 70km to the southeast, at the southern end of Silicon Valley. San Jose is definitely the smaller of the two, in terms of both size and number of flights. However, that is its advantage: frequent passengers on the All Nippon Airways (ANA) Beijing-Tokyo-San Jose report that the Tokyo-San Jose leg is aboard a Boeing 787 Dreamliner (now with fewer battery fire problems). Once on the ground, the same frequent travelers said they've made it out of baggage claim and customs and to hotels in San Jose and nearby Cupertino and Mountain View in as little as 20 minutes.
Especially for Chinese travelers, this could be huge: non-US citizens face queues of an hour or more to clear immigration at SFO. Flying into San Jose would be a disadvantage for people visiting in San Francisco, but for business travelers heading anywhere in the Valley could save hours on the ground. Stay tuned, that route is pending approval. Frankly, it's amazing it hasn't happened earlier, given the links between Silicon Valley investors and Beijing technology start-ups. Then again they're probably flying private.
Popping the emergency exit door is now officially a trend on Chinese airlines, considering how often it has happened recently. Just this week a deranged passenger on a Changsha to Hohhot flight attempted to do it in flight, and was luckily restrained by crew and others on board. Here's my question: where is the cabin staff when this is going on? An exit door isn't easy to open, and the plane is on the ground. Why aren't flight attendants preventing this? I'm not even sure I want to hear the answer.
Speaking of Hainan and deranged passengers, a man flying on Hainan Airlines from Chicago to Beijing was arrested for smoking in the restroom three times. Take the train.
Photo: San Jose CA
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Re: Hainan Airlines May Fly Beijing-San Jose; Opening Exit...
It's changed completely since the '90s.
There were fewer airlines then, so air traffic was managed fairly well, resulting in the majority of flights departing/landing on time. Now the immense increase in airlines and flights has overloaded the system--add to that the headache of having sudden mysterious military restrictions on airspace use, which airlines are not allowed to explain to the commen passenger, and you have the current mess of late departures/landings/cancellations--and justifiable passenger angst.
In addition, the cost of air tickets in the '90s was prohibitive to the majority of the population; now the general economic level of the individual Chinese has risen and there has been a change in attitude toward "disposable" income. Now there are a LOT more people on the airlines--and when there is an increase in numbers in China, the default mode is mob mentality.
Mob mentality in any place brings out the worst in people, and sadly in China, the general (low) level of polite social behavior when there are crowds results in less than pleasant flying experiences. (Or any mode of travel, honestly.) I rarely travel in China anymore because of this; I used to travel more frequently, but the increase in frustration among passengers and the resulting unpredictable behavior has made me avoid all forms of public transport in China like the plague.
Unfortunately, understanding the cause of the problem doesn't help me do a thing to solve it, or make me any more willing to involve myself in it.
Re: Hainan Airlines May Fly Beijing-San Jose; Opening Exit...
I've been flying in China since the 1990's and can't wrap my head around why people are behaving like this now. People would get on the plane without pushing and they never opened the emergency doors. It used to be a pleasant experience flying in China. Now it isn't.