Delayed flight not affected by microblog

Airport authorities in Shanghai Thursday praised a flight attendant's good deed this week, but made it clear that her actions had no part in enabling a delayed flight to eventually depart, allowing an air passenger to reach her hometown in time to visit her dying grandmother.

The Juneyao Airlines flight attendant saw a young passenger in tears on flight Wednesday, roughly half an hour after her flight home to Shenyang had been delayed. When she realized the student was anxious to get home to her family before too late, she put out a Sina microblog post asking air traffic authorities for help in clearing the flight delay.

About an hour later, the flight took off, and the passenger made it home, where her ill grandmother was still alive. More than 300 microblog users have since lauded the attendant for her efforts.

But, the city's airport authorities said that her deed neglected to affect the end result.

"She was kind to do such a thing," Tian Lu, a press officer for the city's airport authority, told the Global Times yesterday. "But, a simple microblog message isn't something that impacts the schedules - our air controllers weren't even aware of the post at the time."

The city's air traffic controllers are generally kept to a tight schedule due to busy air traffic, said Tian.

"They do their best to ensure timely flights, but many situations that are beyond their control frequently creep up and impact the schedules," she said.

According to Tian, the delay that day was caused by a heavy volume of air passengers traveling at the tail end of the Spring Festival travel rush.