cdrum

Last night, Melanie and I returned from Hong Kong.  Had a great great time in Hong Kong!  Our flight was supposed to depart from HKG at 7:30PM, for an arrival around 10:30-10:50PM.

When we got to the airport, we noticed the flight was delayed to 8:10PM - we later found out, according to the pilot, the plane was late getting out of Shanghai due to weather.  This was fine as we could spend a bit more time in this great airport.

We eventually board the plane, but then the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us due to bad weather in Beijing, we’re not sure what time we can take off - we have to join some sort of “queue”.  Yes, I confirmed with some friends in Beijing that it was raining pretty hard.

An aside: my flight from Beijing to Hong Kong landed during a category T3 storm on wednesday, so I don’t know what all the commotion is!

Long story short (ok, there isn’t much more left to the story!), we finally took off around 10:15PM (2.75 hours late) and landed 1:20AM.  Then we had to endure the horrendously inefficient and horribly designed new-Terminal 3.

Weather Gods

It seems to me, and several of my other friends in Beijing, that it’s been raining a heck of a lot more this season than it has in the past years.  And, like automobile drivers, pilots and air traffic controls don’t seem to know what to do when it rains. (In fairness, rain in Beijing is a bit of an abnormal phenomenon, so it does catch us all off guard a bit).

Could it be the powers that be are causing it to rain a bit more than usual to help in the cleanup effort of the city before the Olympics?  Who knows. But it is something interesting to think about.

I have the best luck traveling

This is the 3rd time in as much as a month that my flight, TO Beijing, has been delayed due to Weather.

1. Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing: Saturday, May 31- Original departure time: 9:55PM; actual ~11:15PM
2. Qingdao to Beijing: Friday, June 20 - Original departure time: 9:25PM; actual ~11:30PM
3. Hong Kong to Beijing: Monday, June 30 - Original departure time: 7:30PM; actual 10:15PM

My good friend, Dr. Bushwacker, was flying back from Shanghai Hongqiao last week, also an evening flight - his flight was delayed and delayed, until finally they canceled it and rescheduled him for the following day.

I went to Shanghai this weekend to attend a Toastmasters conference (District 85P Spring Conference), and of course, to cheer on 2 of my club’s members who competed in the District-level Evaluation and Speaking contests.  Sadly, they didn’t place.

As a good friend of mine recently move from Beijing to Shanghai, I decided to extend my trip by one day to spend Sunday with him (I was originally supposed to return to Beijing Saturday night).

Shanghai is nice!

This was my 4th time to Shanghai, and for some reason, I hated it the previous times I went.  This time was different, but I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s that I’m getting tired of Beijing after 5 years?

My return flight was scheduled to depart from Shanghai Hongqiao airport at 9:05PM Sunday night.  I get to the airport on time, we board on time.  Then the perser came on the intercom and told us our flight would be delayed 1 hour “due to bad weather in Beijing”.  Everyone sighs. People start getting up to get their books or music players from their overhead luggage.

Air China was nice enough to put on a movie (in English) that kept me busy…

After about an hour, the perser came on the intercom again, and regretted to inform us “that due to deteriorating weather in Beijing, we’ll be delayed even longer”!  I then decdied to check out just how much the weather in Beijing was deterioratin by SMSing friends in Beijing.  Pretty much, my friends thought I was nutts because the weather was actually fine.  It rained a bit earlier, but it was dry now.

These guys are pulling something!

I remember hearing from someone a while ago that there’s a law in China that if a plane is delayed more than X (I forgot what X was), then the airline would need to compensate  the passengers.  Clearly, this is a pro-passenger law.  But there are rumors that airlines, regardless of the problem, claim the delay is weather related so they can get out of compensating the passengers.  This allows time for the pilots to sober up or the engines to be fixed or whatever the case may be.

Any way, maybe half an hour later, the perser comes on again and says we’ll take off around 11:15PM.   Finally! Some good news!

We were pretty close to that estimate - we touched down around 1AM into the new Beijing Airport Terminal 3.  An improvement, but I wasn’t about to ooo and ahh at that hour (this was my first time actually traveling through this terminal).

Ok, story done.