Fire from fatal Henan Airlines flight.

In light of the accident which claimed 42 (a) lives last night, Henan Airlines has announced that flights would be canceled today, and perhaps for the next 3 days as well. VD8387, an Embraer ERJ-190 (also known as E90), overshot the runway at Yichun’s Lindu airport in heavy fog and landed in a grassy area some 2,000 meters away. 18 government officials were on board the flight, with the Vice Minister Sun Baoshu being in critical condition. The captain of the flight, Qi Quanjun, survived the crash but is hospitalized and currently unable to speak.

It had been nearly 6 years since a Chinese carrier was involved in a fatal accident. In 2004, a China Eastern CRJ-200 crashed in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, killing all 53 on board. 2 citizens on the ground also perished. Less than 24 hours after the incident last night, Henan Airlines dismissed Li Qiang, its general manager. The regional carrier was formerly named Kunpeng Airlines, but was renamed after then c0-owner Mesa Air, a US-based low-cost carrier, pulled out.

An Agni Air Dornier at Lukla airport, situated on a hillside 2800m above sea level.

Not a good week for aviation. Yesterday morning an Agni Air flight from Kathmandu to Lukla encountered adverse weather, turned back, and crashed into a hill about 50 miles south of the Nepalese capital. All 14 on board, 11 passengers and 3 crew members, died. AG-809, a Dornier 228, was enroute to Lukla from Kathmandu when it encountered adverse weather and turned back.

Last week, a North Korean military plane, MiG-21, crashed into a house in Liaoning province, killing the pilot. Nobody else was on board.

An Aires flight breaks into three upon landing.

Also, on August 16 an Aires Boeing 737 with 131 on board, including 6 crew members, crashed in San Andres. Aires 8250, originating in Bogota, encountered a lightning strike, and the plane split into three parts upon landing. Miraculously, all survived except for one passenger who died of a heart attack while being taken away. Nearly a dozen lightning strikes were reported in the area at the time of the crash. Previously, flight88.com has stated that lightning strikes were themselves not usually severe enough to bring down a modern airliner; in this incident it appears to have been a contributing factor. Aires is Colombia’s second largest airline in terms of market share.

(a) It was reported earlier by officials that 43 people had died, but this number was corrected after they said that two body parts belonging to one passenger had been counted as two separate passengers.

Sources: New York Times, Global Times, China Daily, sify.com

Photo Credits (top to bottom): CCTV International video capture; Agni Air; AP.

Henan Airlines flight crashes in Yichun

A Henan Airlines flight from Harbin to Yichun, Heilongjiang province, crashed on landing last night about 9:30 pm. The Embraer ERJ 190 with 96 on board, including 5 crew members, broke apart after landing at Yichun airport. As of this writing there are at least 43 fatalities, and 53 survivors were taken to the hospital. One survivor reported that the plane landed hard and began vibrating; luggage fell out of the overhead compartments, a fire erupted, and the plane broke apart. VD8387 was operated by Henan Airlines, jointly owned by the Henan provincial government and Shenzhen Airlines. Agence France Presse reported that the plane had overshot the runway, but it is unclear whether this was a contributing factor or an incidental result.

Sources: AFP, CCTV. Picture is a screen capture from CCTV News.

PEPEC Examiners in Guanghan

Had a more-or-less routine training session at Guanghan earlier this month. I did have a new spiel for the examiners, for whom I usually do a testing and delivery skills workshop. This time, CAAC asked me to focus on the ICAO Rating Scale for the examiners. Since this was recurrent training, I would’ve thought that the scale would be old stuff for them. I was a little surprised and disappointed that some of them did not know the scale well, since I believe this knowledge is fundamental to examiners and raters.

Speaking of the raters, kudos to the four from China Southern, who rated a sample test perfectly. I was a bit suspicious since 1) they all had the same marks, and 2) their marks matched the official ICAO rating. But there was no way they could’ve known which file I would play for them, since I hadn’t decided until just before the session started, so…good job!

It was my first time in Guanghan, about an hour north of Chengdu, which I have visited at least a dozen times. Guanghan is home to the Civil Aviation Flight University of China. Ask ten people about CAFUC and you might get ten different responses–I’ve heard just about everything from high praise to pure disgust. Anyway, since I was on a very tight schedule, I didn’t have the time to explore the town or the university.

Nanning

We were talking about travel horror stories a few weeks ago, and I nearly had one of my own. I say nearly because in the end it all worked out, but for a while one had to wonder. My flight to Ho Chi Minh City connected in Nanning, in Guanxi province. First of all, for those of you flying internationally out of Nanning airport, be prepared for unorthodox procedures: Their departures-customs-check-in and security are all in the same place. I was looking to check in my luggage before going through departures, but was told to go to the international area, which wasn’t opened yet.  Anyway, the scheduled 12:05 am departure time had come and gone, and we were told to wait for an announcement at 12:30 am. I was a sipping a 25rmb Red Bull when an airport worker was announcing something to the people waiting in front of the international gate. Not able to get any information from the information counter, I went up to ask the rep and was told that our aircraft had not left Beijing yet, and that we would be put up in a hotel to rest. I saw outside the airport doors that there were at least two hotels across the street. But nooooo we boarded a bus — well, first a minivan, but it was quickly obvious that there wasn’t enough room for the 20 or so passengers plus luggage — which took us downtown, some 30kms away, to the Camellia Hotel. (I believe CA has a contract with this company…I remember being stuck in Dalian a few years ago and we were similarly driven not across the street but a ways out to a hotel of the same name. Contrast that to another time we were waiting for a delayed flight out of Wuhan and we boarded a bus which, after a 15-minute wait, drove 10 seconds to the hotel just to the left of the airport.) Anyway, we got to the hotel around 1:00 am and by the time everybody checked in it was about 1:20am. I got to my room and saw there was already a guy asleep there, so I left him alone and went back down to the lobby and chilled on the sofa. (When Chinese airlines are generous enough to offer delayed passengers a temporary room, it is almost always a shared room in a cheap hotel.) At 1:50 am the front desk started calling all the passengers to tell them to get ready to re-board the bus. And at about 2:00 am, we were all back on the bus heading back to the airport. Let’s do some math here…15-20 minutes to get everybody on the bus, about a 50-60 minute bus ride round-trip for a 30-minute nap in a room you have to share…

Good Morning Vietnam

Arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about five in the morning. I was in that dreaded “in between” phase where there’s too much time before my next flight at 2pm and not enough to enjoy being there. I chose to go to the hotel I originally reserved, the Beautiful Saigon, which I booked on the basis of it being Top 10 on tripadvisor. There are a lot of warnings about taxi drivers in travel forums and with just cause. There was a row of three taxis in the queue, all blue Comfort Taxis. There is repeated advice on the boards to take either Mai Linh or Vinasun, but I didn’t see any. I hesitated, but the driver and the spotter both guided me towards the Comfort. I told the driver, make sure to use the meter, and he said okay. I got in, and as he put the car in drive, I said meter meter! He stopped and asked me if I had a taxi ticket (apparently you could pre-pay for your fare at the airport, but I didn’t notice the booth. In fact, everything at the airport was closed when we arrived), and I said no. Then I got out, he got out, and he said he would buy it for me. I said where, I’ll go get it myself. He pointed in a direction where there were some bushes and nothing else. I laughed. I got my roller out of the trunk, and just as I was doing that a Mai Linh taxi came by and I waved it down. While my research said the ride to the hotel should’ve been about 20 minutes, there was almost no traffic at that hour, so after 25 minutes I was getting skeptical. Hmmm…that statue looks familiar. Didn’t I see that restaurant twice during the ride? We finally got to the hotel, and I waved the receptionist out to check the price of the ride. It was 120,000 VND, which was about right, in fact cheaper than I was mentally prepared for (but a bit more expensive than what forum posters had advised). During the ride I kept pestering the driver, making sure the meter was working properly. The poor guy, probably honest all his life, and there I was completely cynical. Good example how a few rotten apples could ruin a whole batch.

At Check-in for Vietnam Airlines

After a shower, a quick tour of the city on back of a motorbike, and lunch at Pho 2000, where Bill Clinton had a bowl of noodles during his visit here, showered again and went back to the airport. The line for check-in at HCMC airport snaked around several times, but it was moving so I wasn’t too concerned. The counter clerk was a China Doll, or should I say Vietnamese Doll, with a round cheery face and all smiles. I asked if she were new and sure enough she said she had just finished her training. Hope she’s still smiling after a couple of years!

Greeted at the airport by volunteers from the University of Languages and International Studies.

Hello Hanoi

Greeted by AsiaTEFL greeters, four university students. The ride to the hotel was $15 flat rate, which seemed high to me considering it was much closer to the airport than the Old Quarter, to get to which should’ve been around that price.

I chose the Ethnic Minority Guest House because it was on the list of hotels nearby the conference venue, and because the name attracted me. I thought I was going to a hotel with colorful wall hangings and draperies and decorated with ceramics and silk and all that stuff that the term “ethnic minority” conjured for me. Ha! Haha!

Ethnic Minority Guest House, Hanoi. 2Stars were 1.5 too many.

This was probably the worst hotel I have set foot in over the last two decades. Maybe ever. And that’s not because I’m comparing it to the Sofitels and Sheratons and Shangri-Las and Nikkos I normally stay at. I mean, I have stayed in some dumps in the past but this takes the cake. Cigarette butts behind the bed, gigantic roaches… The funny thing is, there are some good things about it (did like the large balcony), it’s like you could tell it was a very decent hotel at one time. Unfortunately, that time was probably some 30 years ago. I won’t get into the specifics here but suffice it to say I endured two nights and couldn’t take any more and moved to the Horison, even though it was 4x more expensive.

Rebecca, Emily, and Hanh from the British Council

The Conference

There were some 700 people, much less than expected (there were 7,000 at TESOL in Boston), at AsiaTEFL VIII, sponsored in part by two of my employers, one former and one current, RMIT and the British Council. My presentation on Assessment of Aviation English in China went as planned. As I’d mentioned before, one of the best things about these conferences is meeting peers in the field, many of whom traveled quite a long way to be there. I was pleasantly surprised that Ms. Handan Girginer from Anadolu University in Turkey showed up at my session. Girginer is the co-author of an early article (written about ten years ago) on Aviation English teaching published in the journal English for Specific Purposes. Coming across this article in grad school was one of the key events that led me to focus on Aviation English. Sadly, I missed her presentation on teaching using authentic materials (in this case, reports and other realia from the US Airways Miracle on the Hudson incident), but I’m looking forward to exchanging ideas with her in the near future.

Another pleasant surprise was seeing Sam Shen, now a professor at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Sam was a classmate of mine in graduate school, and was recently blessed with a newborn. Congrats Sam!

At a fabulous seafood restaurant.

Hello also to Dean Soonbuk Kim of Sejong University, Ms. Suehiro from the Japan Coast Guard, Professor Chen Shu-Ju from Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Professor Krisana Sikkhamarn from Sripatum University, Benji in Ho Chin Minh City, Yuko Sugiyama at Kanda University and her sister Michiko studying at Columbia Teachers College, and Lia from the BC in Beijing. I didn’t attend nearly as many presentations as I would’ve liked, mainly, to be honest, because not many of the titles attracted me. Naturally, I try to participate in those which match my own professional interests, which include ESP, assessment, intercultural communicative language learning and teaching, and World Englishes. One of the ones I did go to was Sugiyama-san’s on assessment. Apparently, Kanda has its own full-fledged language assessment instrument called KEPT. It’s always interesting to learn about the assessment process of other tests.

See you in Seoul next year!

The Chengdu portion (yes, Chengdu again) is for CAAC training. I’ve got two days in Guanghan, home of the Civil Aviation Flight University of China, to do some intensive training for PEPEC examiners and raters. This is recurrent training, so I’ll likely see some familiar faces.

An SAS Flight Attendant is shocked you want some peanuts.

This month’s The Beijinger magazine’s cover story is on travel horror stories. We’ve all got some, right? Me, I can’t think of any one particular one…maybe there’ve been too many. Stuck on the tarmac for hours. Waiting an hour and a half in line to check in only to find that when it was finally my turn I had missed the 30-minute window thus not being issued a boarding pass. Sitting next to a passenger who probably hadn’t bathed for weeks. Luggage on the other side of the planet. Yep, BTDT. Crawling on the floor on the upper deck of a 747 where I had lost a diamond earring. I was at the Thai Airways office yesterday and overheard a young woman complaining about not getting even a partial refund for having missed her flight. I’m with the airline on this one though; rules are rules, and there are some tough ones on deeply-discounted tickets. I think I have more happy endings than not, or at least they’re easier to remember.Remember the pre-9/11 days when it was still possible to check-in and board within minutes of departure? I (sheepishly) admit I often took advantage of that. I was on an Air France Prague-Paris flight that was several hours late, and had minutes to make my United connection to Boston. An AF agent sprinted with me to the United gate, where the boarding agent was closing the doors leading to the jetway.  Long story short, flight was full, I was upgraded, and all was good with the world.

Tip: If Chongqing is on your itinerary, don’t bother staying at the Hilton. They were temporarily closed, and still under investigation for housing a brothel. (Then again, maybe you’ll score a good deal because of it!)

NB Photo above from The Beijinger. Ms. Yu Jing is actually offering some packing tips.

File photo of an Airblue Airbus.

Airblue, not to be confused with American carrier JetBlue, is a private carrier founded in 2004 and based in Islamabad, with offices throughout Pakistan, the UAE and UK. The company operates a fleet of Airbus 320s and 321s. The Karachi-Islamabad route is its most frequent.

(Sources: AFP, CNN. Photo from Pakistan Times.)

Dre (Jaden Smith) and mom (Taraji P. Henson) followed by members of Air China cabin crew.

Whatever Air China paid, in consideration and in services, to get involved in the movie, they probably got their money’s worth, since their name and logo is quite prominently plastered all over the screen during the opening scene, lasting several minutes. Overkill, IMHO. I didn’t recognize the crew members, but they all looked proper. What wasn’t so proper was CA982 flying out of Detroit, a city which no Chinese airline currently serve. Detroit to Beijing would most likely be on Northwest (now Delta) via Tokyo. CA982 is the JFK-PEK flight on a Boeing 747-400, which they did get right in the movie.

I’m sure there are forums talking about the movie’s miscues, but one thing those who haven’t been to Beijing in the last year or so won’t know is that directly adjacent to the brand new CCTV tower, the first Beijing landmark we see in the movie, after airport terminal 3, is the burnt steel hulk that was to be the Mandarin Oriental.  No doubt conscious efforts were made not to have that in the movie. I remember during the filming of Mission Impossible 3 in Shanghai many residents were asked to remove their hanging laundry from public view so that the movie wouldn’t capture any of this potentially embarrassing habit. Image, aka face, is of utmost importance in this culture.

With the word karate being of Japanese origin and given the sporadic but somewhat strong residual anti-Japanese sentiment in China, I was very surprised that the government did allow the film to retain its name. Of course, the movie’s Chinese name actually translates into Kung Fu Kid.

Jackie Chan with Jaden Smith in his red star tee.

Hey, did you notice the shirt Dre (main character played by Jaden Smith, son of superstars and producers Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith) was wearing during his visit to Shaolin Temple? It’s a simple green t-shirt with a red star on it. Simple, but it wasn’t so easy to find for me way back when. I first saw this shirt in the massive indoor market at Xizhimen about 7 years ago and wanted it right away, but they didn’t have my size. (I’m in no danger of being charged an extra seat on flights, but let’s just say I’m not the skinniest person in the world either.)

The agnès b version

For the next several years after that I searched almost everywhere, but either my size wasn’t available or the color wasn’t quite right. One day, shopping in agnès b in Guomao (World Trade Center), lo and behold there were solo star t-shirts in different colors. No Maoist green, but they did have a black one with a white star.I looked at the price tag and gulped: 880 RMB ($130 USD at today’s exchange rate, slightly less then). Up to that time my most expensive t-shirt purchase was $85 for an Armani Collezione, about 15 years ago. But I had to have it, and have been living with the guilt of such wasteful spending ever since. (Did I tell you I have possibly the worst timing in the world? Soon after this splurge I did find my green tee, for about $5 USD.)

For the first time in history, an aircraft powered solely by solar energy soared through the night. Andre Borschberg commanded the Solar Impulse on a 26-hour  flight and landed in Payerne, Switzerland. Prior to the flight, the Swiss plane’s 12,000 solar cells were charged for 14 hours. Flight director and former astronaut Claude Nicollier said “It’s a super flight.” Oh, those understated Swiss.

World Cup 2010 is over (Congrats, España! And for you six-degrees-of-separation theorists, Switzerland was the only team to have beaten Spain in this year’s Cup. Makes for a nice segueway…) but the impressions left by Yingli Green Energy remain. Yingli is World Cup’s first-ever Chinese sponsor, and the millions of dollars it spent to flash its name to the hundreds of millions of viewers during the Cup broadcasts was reportedly worth every penny.

Solar energy — as an industry, as a buzz term, as a discipline — is sizzling. Not too long ago, I read an investment article that likened energy stocks today to  internet stocks in the late 90s. While there is no craze accompanying the buying of energy stocks like the fanaticism we saw with dot-coms, the increases are said to be as sharp if not sharper. Now, if I could only get back the 40 grand I lost on aviation stocks…

Which one's the UFO?

Onto matters extraterrestrial. I wasn’t even going to write on this since I knew I wasn’t going to gather enough information, but seeing as how flight88.com visitor seenthing has reported on it and my sister back in LA has been asking me about it, well, I guess a blurb is in order.

Last Wednesday Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan airport was closed for several hours after a UFO sighting. Tower controllers detected the object and diverted inbound flights to Ningbo and Wuxi, while outbound flights were delayed for up to four hours. Witnesses described the object as “bright spot,” “yellow spot,” and “sparkling flashes of light.” A Chinese blogger who was publishing updates of the airport situation promptly had his site shut down by the government. At the time, an official said that the object had been identified and that information would be released on Friday (July 2), but by the weekend the word was “no conclusion has yet been drawn.” Two weeks ago, a UFO was reported over Urumqi but a local expert said that it was remnants of a missile fired by the US. (Didn’t say what the US was firing at, or where from.) As to who should bear the costs incurred by the cancellations and delays, which affected over 2,000 passengers, caused by the Hangzhou UFO, one insider said, assumedly with a straight face, “the owner of the unidentified object.”

Hmm… wonder if Bank of China can exchange ET currency for RMB…

NB Original post title was A Tale of Two Aircraft: One Unconventional, One Unidentified but I figured it was too long and the story was too short.

(Sources: AFP, China Daily, Global Times. Pictures: Uncredited, published in China Daily [top]; AFP [bottom])

This comes not long after American Airlines, formerly the world’s largest airline, was presented with an unattractive time slot for its proposed Chicago-Beijing flight. It seems that AA officials had thought everything had been signed, sealed, and to be delivered when the graveyard slot was presented to them. No doubt shocked and taken aback, AA canceled its inaugural flight and had to write off all the pre-flight publicity and festivities.

The Civil Aviation Management Institute of China in Beijing (Fight88 File Photo)

All of the above occurred while I was on yet another week-long PEPEC review meeting, held at Beijing’s CAMIC this time. I would say it was a fairly productive week, with a bunch of submissions from Air China, China Eastern, and the Civil Aviation University of China reviewed. I said fairly because in fact, many submissions were rejected. It never fails to surprise me how after all this time content providers continue to make the same mistakes, such as not following specifications!

As usual at these meetings we get a status report of the latest test trends and results. Since the exam re-start in June, the pass rate has jumped up remarkably. A few people asked me whether we had made the test easier. The short, simple answer is no. The long answer…well, I’ll save for another time.

From several sources, the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China was once a drab, dreary place to study. Now, CAMIC, with its on-campus Ziyingge Hotel, is a jumping place to be. It’s reaping in the riches from strings of meetings hosted there, along with multiple course offerings for outsiders, i.e. non-aviation people. This has no direct effect on me, of course, but it’s always nice to be in a place alive with activity. Not that I actually get to soak that in much, since our meetings run from early morning to well past 5pm.

Captain Chen (CAAC), Captain Pei (Shenzhen Airlines), and Jill (CAUC) at our PEPEC dinner.

Probably the best part of the week was the group dinner at a nearby restaurant featuring Xinjiang belly dancers. The food wasn’t bad either.

Continuing with further lighter notes…

Cupsets

How do you like the word I just made up? I’m talking about World Cup upsets, as in Brazil getting knocked out in the quarter-final and Germany in the semi (thanks to the oracle octopus). Of course, 2006’s finalists Italy and France have been long gone, with neither being able to advance to the knockout stage.  Holland vs. Spain…who are you rooting for? I like Holland’s team spirit, and their brilliant idea of putting their respective opponent’s flag on their jerseys (next to their own flag, of course) resonates class. However, I can’t get over how repulsed I am by Arjen Robben. He’s so full of talent, it’s a serious shame that he is also my pick for the World Cup Raspberry award, given to the player who exemplifies cowardliness, unsportsmanlike conduct, and plain bad acting. Granted, I don’t watch soccer that much, but every time I watch I see agonizing screams for nicks on the shin (actually on the shin guard!), bellowing cries for tiny taps on the back, and pleading yelps for phantom contact. And nobody does these better than one Arjen Robben.  (To be fair, Spain’s terrific striker David Villa was also caught with an unwarranted howl in the quarterfinal game.) I think this is one of the reasons many Americans don’t watch soccer. We’re a nation that embraces football, and to a lesser extent, hockey, sports where broken bones are par for the course. I’m not saying this is right; just that that’s what it is. But I digress. World Cup Final. I’m not rooting for either team, but I’ll watch and hope for a good match.

Back to the topic of upsets. How about some 300 ticketholders to the Germany-Spain match not being able to make it because the airport wasn’t accepting landings? Now that’s upsetting! Durban King Shaka International airport was reportedly unable to handle all the scheduled incoming flights due to several charter flights being given preference, then congesting the airport. Several planes were turned back to their origin airports in Johannesburg and Cape Town, while others were diverted elsewhere. Imagine spending thousands of dollars and going through all that planning to witness your team in a dream match, and the destination airport tells you, “Sorry, Mick’s plane is still on the runway.” Shame on you, Durban! Good example of how NOT to exercise flow control!

NB There’s no such thing as the World Cup Raspberry; I made it up…but you knew that, right? Maybe there should be…

NB Those charter flights reportedly carried, among others, Charlize Theron and Shakira, coincidentally two of my favorite celebs. Folks, don’t bash them, the airport should have planned better.

(Sources: Caixin, Yahoo, AP)

The new Air China Southwest complex.

Last month, it was discovered that PEPEC test content had been leaked. CAAC almost immediately stopped the test and called an emergency meeting. For the first two weeks in June, an abbreviated group from the PEPEC Expert Panel, along with several airline representatives, met in Shuangliu to come up with new content for the test to replace the compromised material. Reps from the Big 3 airlines (Air China, China Southern, China Eastern) provided the rough material, and the panel scrutinized, edited, rewrote, edited some more, and approved it for inclusion into the test. I won’t say how much material we came up with, but it was quite a bit for two weeks of work. The test will be ready for restart this week. By the way, the suspect of the leakage is facing jail time, and others may be incriminated as well as the investigation continues.

At every one of these meetings I get into a dozen arguments.  Most could be avoided if members on the Panel would just read ICAO 9835 and other relevant documents which quite clearly outline what should and shouldn’t be included in the test.  For example, the LPR (Language Proficiency Requirements) FAQs state that technical questions are not acceptable. So a question that begins with “What is the function of…” is likely poorly formulated. Other arguments include grammar debates. Sometimes, it is no fun to be the only native speaker among a group which includes those who claim mastery of grammar. There are too many arguments to share here, but the following is an illustration.

One of the most common grammar mistakes I see in question formation is the inability to use gerunds and noun phrases. Rather, often the infinitive is used, resulting in awkward-sounding questions. Take the following two sentences for example:

“Do you think to fly at night is stressful?”
“Do you think flying at night is stressful?”

The former is awkward (perhaps nonstandard but I won’t go out on that limb here without my grammar bible) and the latter is more appropriate and just sounds much more natural. I was disappointed that one of the panel members, a Chinese teacher of English in an aviation university, claimed that the latter sentence was incorrect. We wasted valuable minutes arguing this point

The only case I could think of where using an infinitive would be acceptable is when we use “to” to mean “in order to,” in which case introduction of the clause with “that” would be, eh hm, in order.

“Do you think that to fly at night you would need extra concentration?”

Even here, I would prefer:

“Do you think flying at night requires extra concentration?”

As always, there is some degree of compromise. While the appropriateness of some of the questions remain, um, in question, the test is grammatically sound (at least the portions that I got to review). Unfortunately, to CAAC speed of output is just as if not more important than quality, and as such some things I objected to were included anyway. In the end, we got our zongzi (sticky rice wrapped in leaves) so that we could eat and shut up. No, not really. It was our gift for the coming Lantern Festival.

Aviation Insiders

During the meeting, I got to meet some new people and reacquainted with a few others I haven’t seen for a long time.  One of the latter is a China Southern captain who was involved in the Baiyun delays which led to rioting last month. While he tries to communicate to the passengers as much information as possible, that information is limited to what ATC tells him, and it’s not much. He fully sympathizes with the passengers, but often his hands are tied. So, guys and gals, the next time you are delayed, don’t automatically throw daggers at the flight crew.

Another piece of insider info I got was what I had suspected all along–that some flights get canceled simply because of low passenger count. The airlines will never tell you this, but if a flight gets undersold it may be canceled and the ticket-holding passengers moved to a later flight, thereby combining two flights to bump (pun intended) the number of passengers to one that is profitable, or at least not damaging to the bottom line, for the airline. I’m not sure this would or could ever happen in the States; too many lawsuits would spring up. I recall at least two occasions where I flew on nearly empty (fewer than 10 passengers) planes.

CAAC Country Club

It’s my 15th or so time in Chengdu, but only the second time for CAAC. The last time I was here for a CAAC meeting, their branch office was just minutes from the airport, in a very government-looking complex. This time, I got to see their new headquarters, in a newly-developed part of Shuangliu, when I went there to do recordings at the test center. Let me tell you, the place looks more like a Howard Hughes mansion than a Chinese government office. It has a country-club euro-ish feel to it, complete with a stream going through it and well landscaped bushery (shrubbery?) throughout. While it doesn’t look anything like a government building,  it fits right in with at least one other complex just a few meters down the road, the Sichuan Golf and Country Club. Swank.

Chengdu

In order to be United, we have to first be Untied.

It’s been unseasonably cool in Chengdu the past couple of weeks. I was in Harbin the weekend between the two meeting weeks and it was a good 15 degrees warmer up there. Following the meeting I stayed in a hotel on Chunxi Road. In an earlier post I had mentioned that my favorite hotel here was the Crowne Plaza. Just a few minutes’ walk from there is the Ane Grand, where I am now. I’ve tried over a dozen hotels in Chengdu and have to rank this among the best in terms of convenience and value. It has a mix of  modern and Old Sichuan motifs, and somehow it works.

The World Cup has begun…watched all matches so far. I’m not a big soccer fan but when it comes to the Cup I get caught up in the fever. I still remember back in 1994 when Brazil won my hometown neighborhood, as eclectic as they come and housing a sizable Brazilian contingent, went wild with an ad hoc parade, complete with stadium-sized flags, hooting horns, and glam drag queens, creating a mini Carnavale. Even with the Chinese not having qualified this time I see the madness building up here in China. It’s going to be a fun few weeks. Go USA! Go Brazil!

And Happy Lantern Festival.

—

Update: I checked out of the Ane Grand yesterday and they tried to charge me for some mysterious toiletries I didn’t take. Unless I’m staying at the Ritz, I bring my own toiletries on trips. Anyway, I now have to adjust my review of the hotel to include this incident, and have subtracted a full star (making them a 2.5-star now) for their unjust charge.