Air rage: how it differs in West and East, and why Chinese passengers are in a league of their own
Updated: 7:06pm, 26 May, 2019

When it comes to air rage and unruly passengers, Westerners are more often drunk, and Asians are normally more tolerant; Chinese passengers are a special case.
Air rage – or “unruly passenger behaviour”, in the experts’ terminology – manifests differently in Asian and Western travellers, while Chinese air rage may be a genre all of its own. That’s according to a co-author of a report by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The research by Schuckert and his colleagues revealed that, while both Asian and non-Asian passengers showed little tolerance for violent and abusive behaviour, Asian passengers were much more tolerant of other types of unruly conduct.

Incidents related to violations of personal space, such as armrests being occupied, excessive seat reclining, or those relating to service disruption, did not cause a meltdown in the same way they did among Western passengers.
Nevertheless, online reports and social media posts suggest there are exceptions – and they tend to apply to passengers from China. In response, the China Air Transport Association opened a no-fly blacklist in 2016, banning offending Chinese passengers from flying for up to two years.

The China Outbound Tourism Research Institute estimates that in 2019, there will be 180 million outbound tourist trips from China, year-on-year growth of 13 per cent.

“Social media pictures or videos [of unruly passenger behaviour], especially from China, are legendary,” says Schuckert.

The China Air Transport Association’s no-fly ban came in the wake of incidents such as a 2015 case in which three Chinese passengers were forcibly removed from a flight awaiting departure from Siem Reap in Cambodia, to Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province, after a scuffle broke out on board.

According to a report in the Chengdu Commercial Daily, the argument started after a man complained to a woman in front of him that her seat was tipped back too far and he inadvertently touched her hair.

In another case that made headlines, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued a statement in June 2016 saying that two men aboard a Hainan Airlines flight had fought with a member of the cabin crew and a passenger who tried to help. They then pounded on the aircraft’s cockpit door after their request to be upgraded to business class was denied. They continued to kick and punch after police boarded the flight and had to be restrained with handcuffs, the Chinese aviation authority said.

The tourism school’s research also found that 50 per cent of all air rage incidents are triggered by or associated with excessive alcohol consumption, but this seems to be less applicable to Chinese and other Asian passengers, among whom a culture of boozing is less prevalent.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-l ... hy-chinese