Airlines should stand test of extreme weather

A day before my flight to Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on April 20, China Southern Airlines sent me a text message, saying the flight had been canceled, and automatically rebooked me on the same flight on April 22. Since I had to attend to some important business in Guangzhou on April 20, I booked another flight to the capital of Guangdong province via Kunming for April 20.

It was while waiting at the Changshui International Airport in Kunming, Yunnan province, for the connecting flight that I realized the heavy rainstorms in Guangzhou had made it difficult, if not impossible, to travel by air to Guangzhou that day, even the next few days.

More than 100 passengers were waiting with me to board the same flight to Guangzhou, and almost all of them, I was given to understand, thought it was better to cancel a flight at the origin than to run a risky operation or divert it to another airport.

Apart from the inconvenience caused to passengers, operating such flights is also costly for the carriers, for they have to make emergency, alternative arrangements. In the case of the Kunming-Guangzhou passengers, for instance, the pilots and crew had to be kept on standby and the passengers booked into a hotel. Initially, the passengers were told that they need to be ready to depart at any moment. But later they were notified that the flight had been canceled.

How come different airlines took drastically different measures in the face of the heavy rainstorms in Guangdong? Some were proactive while some were relatively passive. Did all the airlines get the same forecast for, and information on, the weather conditions in Guangdong? And why did the public not receive any warning about the weather in Guangdong and not informed that conditions are not suitable for air travel on certain days?

The "Important Weather" section of the China Meteorological Administration's website did publish relevant information on April 17. However even an educated person would take a while to navigate through the website. Therefore, it would be immensely helpful for the public if the CMA built a one-stop information center on its website.

Thanks to climate change, extreme weather events are occurring with higher frequency and, at times, they are difficult to predict.

There is a need to be wary of climate change and associated extreme weather events, as well as other natural disasters. According to a survey conducted by a water governance research team at the City University of Hong Kong, half of the respondents said they were extremely worried about climate change, but not so much about droughts and floods.

The fact that an increasingly high number of people know, and are worried about, climate change shows the media campaign on climate change has been successful. But it also indicates there is a missing link in people's understanding of climate change and its impacts.

It is essential to take all the necessary climate actions needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change. That can be done only when climate change, its impact on the environment and ecology, and people's lives are included in school curricula and made part of business governance for building risk management strategies. The meteorological offices have a lot to offer in this regard.

The author is an associate professor at the School of Energy and Environment and Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong, and a visiting associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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