Before sun, sand and lots of fun, torture by flight delay

This summer, airport delays have been so common in China that for many people air travel has become a fortune.[Photo provided to China Daily]

In the departure lounge, however, I was informed that my flight to Jakarta would be delayed to 7:50 pm because of "air traffic flow control". In panic, I calculated the possible arrival time in Jakarta and figured that it would be around midnight.

I asked an Indonesian passenger whether it was common for Garuda Indonesia to have delayed flights. "Nope, Garuda hardly delays," he said.

After more waiting on the tarmac, our plane finally took off and arrived at Jakarta airport at 12:40 am local time, giving me just an hour to catch my next flight.

I spent five minutes running to and going through customs. Then I had to wait for my luggage. Probably because ours was the last flight to have arrived that night, and most of the support staff had gone off, my luggage appeared after 45 minutes.

I dashed to the check-in counter of Garuda's domestic flight at 1:39 am, but a man on duty told me that the last departure flight had just taken off.

So I found myself sleeping on a bench at the airport and had to pay $140 for two new flights, from Jakarta to Manado early next morning, and from Manado to Ternate at noon.

Fortunately, the Garuda flights were on time. I reached the resort on Halmahera on the evening of July 24, while my friends were already relaxing on the beach.

Because I had to hire a car and a speedboat, I paid $120 to get to the resort.

Four days later back in Beijing, I read a cover story on a popular Chinese news channel, titled "Airlines in China - is it possible to have fewer delays?" and realized that my runaround was no accident.

According to the report, China's flights are the least punctual on earth. The flights' on-time rate has been dropping in the past few years, from barely 80 percent in 2010 to 68.37 percent in 2014.

In the first six month of 2015, the average rate was 65.17 percent and in June, it was 59.82 percent.

According to civil aviation data analysis in April, the arrival on-time rates of 12 airlines from the Chinese mainland were lowest among 116 major international airlines.

On the list, Xiamen Airlines ranks No 111 with the arrival on-time rate of 57.03 percent.

What a pity that I had not read the report several months earlier.