Violent reaction from woman when her flight was cancelled lands her in jail.
A woman with the surname Li had been waiting to board a flight from Shenyang to Changsha, capital of the central Hunan province, on Thursday.
Close to midnight, after a delay of five hours, the airline announced that the flight had been cancelled due to bad weather. The name of the airline involved was not disclosed.
Dozens of angry passengers surrounded the airline counter demanding an explanation, a police officer surnamed Xu told the South China Morning Post.
“People were booing and someone screamed ‘Hit him, hit him!’ But no one really did hit him except for Li,” the police officer said.
An onlooker filmed Li, who is in her 40s, taking her frustration out on an employee at the airline counter.
The six-second video shows Li grabbing the man’s arm with her left hand over the counter while she slaps his head with her right hand, as he calmly tries to pull away from her.
He was bleeding slightly after the attack and later reported the incident to police.
The woman also smashed a computer on the counter.
Li was fined 200 yuan (RM127) and detained for 10 days after she repeatedly slapped a male staff member at an airport in northeastern China because her flight was cancelled.
On social media, some commenters felt that a fine of 200 yuan and 10 days’ detention was not a harsh enough penalty.
“A penalty of 200 yuan? That’s ridiculous. They should have at least fined her 5,000 yuan,” one person wrote on Weibo.
Another person wrote: “I really can’t understand why we’re demanding that people in the service sector simply take these insults and keep smiling. Why should they put up with customers who don’t respect others?”
Last month, a Chinese PhD student was blacklisted on Air France flights after she slapped a member of staff when she was told that the check-in for her flight from Wuhan to Paris had closed.