On Friday night, after a three-hour weather delay, passengers boarded a Beijing-bound flight in Dhaka, Bangladesh that had a stopover in Kunming, a provincial capital in southwest China. Scheduled to leave Kunming at 8:45 p.m., the connecting flight was delayed until 11 p.m. by additional poor weather. This did not make the passengers happy. Several refused to board and demanded compensation, but by 1:45 a.m. the airline had persuaded everyone to board. But that wasn't the end of the passengers' problems. After they boarded, the airport staff had to clear snow from the runway, which took over an hour. Finally, the plane began to taxi at 3:15 p.m.--15 minutes after the pilot inexplicably shut off the air conditioning. When passengers complained, the pilot reportedly asked: "Are you going to die soon? If not, just wait." Two passengers then burst open the emergency exits, which resulted in their arrests. The journalist Matt Sheehan, who in 2013 described a Chinese airport melee  in hugely entertaining fashion, told MSNBC that "Chinese people have just begun waking up to this idea that as a consumer you're entitled(...) to certain protections, but they don't have any of the institutions like consumer rights groups that do this professionally." Airlines--and the airline industry--are a useful lens for viewing China's development as a whole. In his excellent book China Airborne, Atlantic national correspondent and aviation buff   James Fallows described how China is attempting to condense a century's worth of developments in aviation into a few decades. This breakneck pace has resulted in a dazzling array of new airports scattered across the country, but has included some serious growing pains. According to Matt Sheehan , the passengers   _   .
should refuse to board and demand compensation . should complain about the delay by saying something bad . should take immediate measures like opening the emergency exits to protect themselves . should appeal to institutions like consumer rights groups for their rights .