TAIYUAN, CHINA—Air China Flight 1236 was supposed to take off at 8:10 p.m. for Beijing from Xian, hometown of China’s famous terra cotta warriors.

It felt like the warriors could have marched faster. What was supposed to be a 100-minute flight last month ended up delayed, diverted and cancelled to the point that it took passengers 18 hours to get to Beijing.

China’s skies are in a state of almost permanent gridlock. During the month of July, only 17.8 per cent of flights departing from Beijing’s airport were on time, according to FlightStats. In August, on-time departures improved, but only to a miserable 28.8 per cent. The U.S. website ranked Beijing worst out of 35 top international airports for punctuality, with Shanghai close behind.

The maddening delays have become a drag on the economy and the trigger for near-riots. In a country that prides itself on social order, state media reported 26 brawls at Chinese airports between May and August. One Hong Kong airline has started teaching its flight attendants kung fu.

Flights here are delayed for pretty much the same reason highways are backed up: Explosive economic growth has produced traffic faster than infrastructure has improved.

Since 2003, the number of airline passengers in China has nearly quadrupled, to 319 million last year.

Meanwhile, airspace is limited by the People’s Liberation Army, which controls most of the skies above China. In a 2011 interview with state news media, Li Jiaxiang, head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, revealed that the military controlled 80 per cent of the airspace. In the U.S., roughly 17 per cent is federally controlled.

Air traffic controllers in China also err on the side of caution, the result of strict regulations imposed after a spate of accidents in the early 1990s. Flights are spaced about six to nine nautical miles apart, which means 20 to 40 planes can land on a runway every hour (as opposed to 60 in the United States.)

In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics, China spent more than $3.5 billion building its showcase Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport. The glass-atrium vanity project, the world’s second-largest airport terminal, made Beijing look rich but did nothing to alleviate the congestion in the air.

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