Gasping for air

Flight delays make all passengers frustrated, but when over 100 passengers, including two 4-year-old boys, were trapped on a plane for an additional 12 hours, one passenger lashed out.

In a post that later became the focus of special coverage, Su Qun, the editor-in-chief of Chinese sports newspaper Basketball Pioneer, took to his Sina Weibo account to hammer the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) for its "unpreparedness for conventional emergencies" and "lack of basic respect."

According to a recent Sina Weibo poll of 13,000 Web users, most blame airlines or airports more than they blame bad weather, or anything else for that matter. But those on the ground at the airports tell a different story; a story of how tussles with the military over control of airspace are strangling China's civil aviation industry while enraging passengers.

Bitterness in the air

"Most people don't understand how civil aviation works. We are trying really hard to remain punctual but the current system has made it very difficult for us to keep up with the flight schedule," a staff member from the BCIA told the Global Times on condition of anonymity.

Complaints can also be heard from the airlines. Zhang Wu'an, a spokesman for the Shanghai-based Spring Airlines, told the Global Times that squeezed traffic control over the civil flights is largely to blame for the delays, rather than the weather.

"Too many planes but too few air routes describes the problem facing the country's civil aviation industry," Zhang said, adding that as the world's second largest nation in terms of passenger volume, with the demand for flights skyrocketing over the past few years, the number of air routes has remained relatively unchanged.

"Flights among cities are ordered to fly in a limited zone that is just kilometers wide. When a route is overloaded, that's how delays happen," he said.

The channel for flights between Beijing and Guangzhou, for example, is only 20 kilometers in width and limited to an altitude of 14,000 meters. The channel's capacity and safety protocols determine the number of flights.

The cargo volume of the whole industry in China is expected to grow to 63.2 billion tons in 2012 and the passenger volume will top 320 million.

The total distance of China's air routes, which stands at 164,500 kilometers over 490 air routes, has been growing at 2.6 percent for the past five years, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.

"It's a problem that applies to every airline," Zhang added, "We have great demand for routes."

Military rule

Chen Feng, chairman of Hainan Airlines, was quoted by China National Radio on the weekend as saying that his company has strict rules on sticking to the schedule but the tightened air traffic control requirements have made their planes line up for hours at airports before taking off.

"The control system, which was part of the air defense system, worked when there were few flights decades ago," Chen said, contrasting it to the current system.

According to aviation regulations, the country's current air traffic control system is run by the National Air Traffic Control Commission, an agency operated under the auspices of the People's Liberation Army Air Force.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) can only monitor limited airspace in certain regions and must follow the military's orders. Whenever there are air force drills, surrounding civil airports are asked to ground their planes.

"Civil aviation uses only about 20 percent of the air routes and the remainder falls under the military's complete control," an insider from the CAAC told the Global Times, adding that whenever the CAAC wants to approve a new route or optimize an existing one, the military must first give its assent.

"So far as we know, the military uses only 20 percent of the routes farmed out to it, while a large majority of them, especially those in western regions, sit idle," the source said, adding that the central government has been talking about alleviating the fight for resources between the military and civil aviation stakeholders.

"Despite the fact that civil aviation stakeholders crave more airspace, some air force bases are located in close proximity to major cities, where military activities have been seen to interfere with civil flights," the source said. "It would make much more sense to relocate some bases to less populated regions."

Light on the horizon

There have been some moves to ameliorate the situation.

In August, the military agreed to "actively release" more temporary routes for airlines, a change from the previous procedure, which stipulated that the CAAC must file an application to obtain approval from the military in extreme weather. Airlines can now receive information on available temporary routes one day ahead and are able to adjust their schedule with more flexibility.

The move will help increase the current portion of temporary routes, which stand at 18 percent.

In October another plan was implemented to allow civil flights to adopt varying altitudes, which was loosened from a restriction of 8,400 meters and above and allowed the number of flights to double on the same route.

All these measures will help ease the current large-scale delay afflicting the airlines and passengers but do not challenge the management system.

"In most developed countries, civil aviation is monitored by the government, and the flights take up a considerable proportion of the airspace," Xu Xiaohao, a professor from the Civil Aviation University of China, told the Global Times.

There are indications that the government is fully aware of the situation but changing it could take great effort and time. Li Jiaxiang, director of the CAAC, said on July 20 during a press conference that reforms to airspace management are crucial in solving air traffic congestion but admitted an overhaul like this is not going to be easy.