Air-rage incidents go sky high in China

at any other time in history. But a spate of air-rage incidents – in Chinese known as " kong nu zu " or "angry people in the sky" – has prompted a bout of soul-searching among the Chinese about why it is happening.

In December, at the shiny new Changshui airport in the Yunnanese provincial capital, Kunming, fog caused a flight to be delayed, stranding almost 10,000 passengers.

Riots ensued after the airport authorities failed to provide the stranded passengers with hot water or any kind of information.

Possibly the most high-profile incident took place last month, again at Changshui, when mining executive and senior Communist Party official Yan Linkun angrily, but remarkably methodically, trashed the boarding gate, including a couple of computers, after he missed his flight.

A week later at Beijing Capital International Airport, six business-class passengers travelling together refused to fasten their seat belts or turn off their mobile phones before take-off. When the flight crew and the pilot confronted them, they became abusive and the aircraft had to return to the gate.

Then there was the case in Baiyun airport in Guangzhou, where two passengers apparently beat a member of staff to the ground over a delay to a flight to Melbourne.