Our flight back to Beijing was delayed 6 hours. We arrived at airport at 620pm to check in for the 830am flight, a direct flight of 11 hours and 20mins between Melbourne and Beijing, bypassing the usual stopover in Shanghai.
We felt a bit elevated when the checkin lady gave us meal vouchers when we completed our checkin procedure. Kristine and Kimberley had a feast at McDonald's plus three bottles of fruit juices from another eatery place. Soon after arriving at the boarding gate, the meal vouchers became explainable, as the flight was then delayed to 1030pm. As 1030pm approached, the boarding sign updated the time to 1130pm, yet the all passengers were told to collect fresh meal vouchers. I told Kristine the airlines would not issue meal vouchers at 1030pm if the departure time was 1130pm.
We were still full from McDonalds so we burned the meal vouchers on a gift box of 20 freshly baked macarons for Beijing.
The boarding time kept ticking and changing:
1230am
130am
200am.
A few boisterous passengers became rowdy and started to hurl abusive words at the Airchina ground crew. Soon enough a pair of policemen came, followed a few minutes later by another team of 2. At first the policemen just stood by, but as a male passenger got louder and louder, a police stepped up and yelled "Quiet!". That didnt really work with this crowd.
Then the police started shouting "This is becoming a Public Order issue and if you dont quiet down, you will miss your flight!". That male ringleader then disappeared, to be substituted by 2 younger students ho spoke English. It then became more civil. Captain of the flight, sounded like a Bristish, came out to explain the mechanical problem and apologised on the PA.
An hour later, our flight departed.
