I Was An Editorialist

Last flight home out of Shanghai.  Everything in Hong Qiao Airport was closed. I found one last place that would serve me some noodles after I pleaded.  The plane was delayed, of course.  Once on board around 11:00PM I find that I have all three seats to myself.  That is a surprise.  I’m out, off to nod,  before the safety message is through. 

Tonight, I wished I had the leverage of a great audience.  Only a handful of people ever look at this blog.  But if that number were greater.  If I was a reporter for the New York Times, and could bring my journalistic flashlight to shine on something that has long bothered me, I would do so tonight.  I am so fed up with Air China’s policy of using busses to whisk passengers to their arrival gates after departing the plane.  Flying in from Shanghai, flying in from almost any domestic flight this is what always happens.  It’s the world’s largest, newest, showcase airport.  But we can’t pull people up to a gate?  People riding the nation’s flagship carrier?  Why?  Who decided this?  What was the trade-off.  Shanghai doesn’t treat Air China passengers this way.

Tonight we were, of course, forced to board a bus.  The bus was stuffed to its human capacity limit. I could feel my back straining, searching in futility for a place to put my feet evenly on the floor.  An inch more that way and I was on to someone foot. The inch to the rear had similarly been claimed.  Under my breath I curse the fat bureaucrat at Air China who, faced with a decision, signed off on this ‘busses for the masses’ strategy.

If it were Japan, everyone would, at least be silent.  Silence is a good thing at 1:45AM.  A man across from me, out of eyesight but well within ear shot keeps playing a clip over and over on his smart phone.  Asshole, what are you thinking?  It was good that he was out of eye shot.  Uncomfortable and my patience is withered. If I could have seen that smart phone I might have just taken it out of his hand.

If I was an editorialist, I could write about this and assume that it might garner a response.   I could interview one or another of my fellow sardines and ask if I could have an attributable quote they might share as to how shitty all this was.  I could get home call and reach the answering machine and write in my article that Air China “declined to comment for this article” and pen off something to suggest that this was an endemic problem for the nation’s flagship carrier.  Thousands of people would write in to say: “I know!  Why do they do that?  It’s ridiculous.”  And the fat bureaucrat of my mind would have lost face.  He’d have to scramble.  He’d have to find a solution. 

Enter your comments below, all ye who have been forced onto an Air China bus, against your will, after landing at the Beijing Capital Airport. 

Friday 6/01/18