Yesterday morning, I saw various messages about MU2036 on WeChat and Weibo. This morning, I saw updated news reports, such as the official report on the authoritative China News Service website — Passengers who illegally opened emergency doors at Kunming Airport detained for 15 days.

Here is a summary of the incident:

Flight MU2036 departed from Dhaka with a stopover in Kunming to reach Beijing. The flight landed at Kunming Changshui International Airport at 21:20 on January 9. Due to snow and rain at the airport, boarding did not begin until 0:00 on January 10. After the boarding of 153 passengers was completed in the early morning of January 10, the aircraft queued waiting for deicing.

At 3:45 AM, MU2036 began fuselage deicing work. Due to deicing requirements, the air conditioning inside the aircraft was turned off for about 30 minutes. Due to poor air circulation inside the cabin, an elderly female passenger felt unwell. At this point, most passengers on board were concerned about her condition and demanded the captain come out to explain. The co-pilot of MU2036 came out to explain, but his response did not satisfy the passengers, causing their emotions to run high and leading to a dispute with the crew.

After the flight was pushed back from the boarding bridge, passengers suddenly opened one emergency door on the left wing and two emergency doors on the right wing of flight MU2036. Subsequently, the crew taxied the aircraft back to the gate.

The behavior of the passengers who violated aviation safety certainly deserves criticism, but I always feel that the sheer number of late-night flights domestically is a hidden hazard.

First of all, humans are after all diurnal creatures. At night, unstable emotions increase, people become relatively tense, easily angered, and tempers become short—these are natural phenomena that objectively exist. Aviation personnel have long adapted to the confined environment inside the aircraft, but for ordinary people, compared to trains, subways, and buses, flying is one of the modes of transport they have the least contact with. They have a natural fear of this relatively unfamiliar environment, which I think is human nature and conforms to natural laws. Especially when many people are confined in a space for a long time, one person’s sense of unease can easily spread to others, making this group susceptibility to agitation and irritability more likely to occur.

In addition, from a passenger’s perspective, delayed night flights have a greater impact on their lives than daytime delays. For example, if they need to work the next day, they have to ask for leave. For those who are already very busy or have very little annual leave, taking leave might be a significant psychological burden. Furthermore, late-night transportation is inconvenient—either troubling relatives or friends to pick them up, spending more money on a taxi home, or dry waiting at the airport for the first public transport bus to arrive. These small issues all increase the psychological pressure on passengers.

Therefore, I feel that while strengthening general aviation popular science to reduce their fear and psychological pressure, the onboard crew should pay more attention to observing passengers’ psychological changes during night flights and adopt effective communication methods to reduce their anxiety, which I wonder would be more effective. For example, increasing in-cabin announcements to let passengers know the plan at all times, so they don’t easily imagine negative outcomes; occasionally handing out fruit or snacks to distract passengers; or giving out small souvenirs.

Of course, the most fundamental solution is to reduce the frequency of night flights, but that doesn’t seem easy. According to Manager Liu, “Aircraft utilization rates aren’t high, but night flights are numerous. Daytime flying is relatively less, not because airlines are unwilling to arrange it; on one hand, daytime slots are tight, and operational arrangements cannot be completed during the day,” “It really is a systemic reason, not just an issue with specific trades; accumulated ills are hard to cure.” This is truly a massive systematic project.