A husband and wife were both slapped with five days in jail for having disobeyed airport workers and entered a restricted area. Air China flight CA1519 was ready to depart and taxi at 9am on September 14 when the couple arrived late for boarding. As Shanghai Daily reported, the couple knocked down airport security and entered the restricted airport apron in order to block the plane from leaving.

Airport police said the wife stood with her luggage in front of the truck towing the airplane after it had left the passenger boarding bridge and was on the way to the runway. The Beijing airport authority said she had ignored the orders of security guards and threatened aircraft members to allow her onto the plane.

Air China representatives arrived next, but weren’t able to change the couple’s minds. The airline representatives quoted the wife saying “there’s no way the plane could fly without taking her on board.”

The flight crew of the plane refused to allow the couple to board the plane. Air China said the couple was late because they had missed the flight’s boarding announcement.

When airport police finally arrived, the woman was said to be screaming and crying.

The Air China flight resumed operations shortly afterwards, having been delayed by just 20 minutes.

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The massive infrastructure undertaking will not be cheap. To help cover the costs, China plans to invest upwards of 77 billion yuan ($11.7 billion) on civil aviation infrastructure this year alone. The investment will support eleven key infrastructure projects and 52 upgrades on civil aviation facilities, including work on new airports in Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Dalian.

Construction of Beijing’s second international airport is scheduled to be completed in June 2019. Work on the airport’s terminal and air traffic control facilities began last September, while construction of other support buildings is expected to start June of this year. Located to the south of the capital, Beijing New Airport will be the largest in the country. The airport will have seven runways and process some 72 million passengers a year.

Meanwhile, a new runway being built at the existing Beijing Airport, is anticipated to help accommodate an additional 8 million passengers a year.

Citing a rise in air travel that saw Chinese take 4 billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, the CAAC plans to not only increase the number of airports but also the number of domestic and international routes.

Xu Hongjun, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, admits that the expansion of airports in China is not good for everyone. “A lot of small airports are not doing well. They need a lot of subsidies from the central government. They were too optimistic,” said Xu. Perhaps the best example is the airport in Libo, Guizhou. Following the completion of construction in 2007 at a cost of $57 million, the airport made headlines after receiving only 151 passengers in all of 2009.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Chinese airlines have been rated as some of the worst in the world, and that Chinese passengers normally have to endure numerous flight delays when traveling in China. Domestically, Chinese airlines are also facing increased competition from the country’s high-speed rail network, which offers passengers a more affordable way to travel within China.

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Posted to WeChat and Weibo on January 4, the photos depict a man brandishing a gun in his hand, while another picture shows another man within the same group pointing the gun at his fellow passengers, who display a mock sense of fear.

No flight details were made available, but the incident is believed to have taken place at Beijing International Airport.

Online discussion over the pictures have some people saying the gun is a fake, while others believe it to be a battery charger for a laptop computer.

In addition to local police, the Public Security Bureau has also launched an investigation.

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Zhao was transferring to a Wenzhou flight at Beijing Airport at noon on August 21 when she was stopped at airport security. A worker told the woman in her forties that she was not able to bring the imported cognac through the security checkpoint in her carry-on. As it was too late to transfer the cognac to her checked-in luggage, Zhao did what any responsible person that hates wasting food would do: she sat down in a corner and drank the entire bottle of cognac herself.

That created a new security problem though, and it had to do with the bottle of cognac that was now inside her.

Zhao started acting wildly and yelling incoherently. Due to her massive inebriation, when Zhao fell to the floor, that’s where she stayed. When police arrived at the scene, they decided not to let her board her flight out of concern that she had become a security risk to others and herself as Zhao was travelling alone.

Zhao was taken to a convalescence room and was checked out by a doctor. It wasn’t until 7pm when she sobered up and realized what she had done. Zhao was eventually released by police to her family who had come to Beijing Airport to escort her home.

Hard choices have been made before at security checkpoints in Chinese airports. This past June, two brothers were stopped at the security checkpoint at Guangzhou Airport for having wine stashed in their carry-on. The brothers explained that this wine had special medicinal properties used to help male fertility. However, the security workers were adamant in enforcing regulations, and so the brothers decided to drink the RMB 8,000 bottle of wine themselves (below).

And if you’re thinking this would make a funny scene in a Chinese movie, well, it already has been. In Xu Zheng’s breakout hit Lost on Journey (2010), Wang Baoqiang’s yokel character is prevented by airport security from bringing a drink onto the airplane, so he decides to drink it himself. Of course, the distinction here is that Wang’s character chugs down an entire bottle of milk.

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Transaero flight UN8888 to Moscow took off from Beijing International Airport at 1:17am, and was witnessed three minutes later by residents living in the Dongbianmen and Guomao in the south-eastern parts of the city.

The low-flying flight is said to have been heading west further into the city after entering the third ring road, but turned around after reaching the south-east corner of the second ring road.

The incident was widely shared online by netizens, with some estimating the model B763 airliner to have been flying at 1,500 meters, or 5,000 feet.

A netizen living near Huawei Bridge said they were woken up by the deafening sound of the airplane and saw it upon going to their window. “The sound of the engine was so close, it was like right over my head and scared me half to death,” the person said.

As seen by the green path in the diagram above, airplanes departing from Beijing Airport (designated by an airplane symbol) are supposed to follow a path south, then east, and then north in order to leave the city. Instead, the Russian airline took an irregular path that led it south-west deep into the heart of the city before making a stiff turn that led it east (diagram below).

As explained in media reports, the reason for the wrong turn is because the airliner captain made a navigational error. Air traffic controllers say they were soon able to correct the path of the airplane, and that the incident had not made much of an impact upon the city.

There is no word yet as to any punishments that will handed down due to the incident.

China’s airspace is strictly regulated and heavily controlled by the country’s military.

Related:

• Air China Flight Takes Off With Door Improperly Secured
• Beijing’s Traffic Gridlock Getting You Down? Now You Can Commute By Helicopter
• Could Flight Delays in China Finally Be a Thing of the Past? Country to Open More Commercial Airspace

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The official language of aviation is English to avoid any problems, but three pilots from Southeast Asia-based airlines say it’s not happening enough in the Chinese capital. Speaking on the condition on anonymity, the pilots admitted they became confused when different air traffic controllers changed the runways scheduled for landing in Chinese. The pilots stressed that all pilots and air traffic controllers should speak a common language so they can share common situational awareness, especially in cases of emergency.

An official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China named Li Mao said the practice of using English to communicate with foreign airline pilots and Mandarin for Chinese pilots has been a long-standing one. He did not elaborate further.

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