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Mon, Feb 16, 2009
Reuters
Hysterical passenger gets later flight at no added cost

HONG KONG (Reuters Life!) - A Chinese woman who freaked out at Hong Kong's international airport after missing her flight has hit the big time on YouTube after her hysterics were filmed and uploaded to the video sharing website.

The middle-aged woman was seen charging at a security guard at the departure gate, before screaming "aieyyahhhhh," at the top of her lungs in a rant that lasts about three minutes.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVw7entkxg)

The woman, sprawled on the ground, was seen wailing. An elderly man traveling with her tried to pull her to her feet but she shouted in Cantonese: "I want to go, I want to go."

Cathay Pacific said it had already closed the aircraft's doors and had offloaded the woman's baggage, and so was unable to allow her to board the flight to San Francisco.

"Don't be so upset, don't be so emotional," a male Cathay Pacific staff member is heard saying on the video.

Cathay Pacific said the incident occurred earlier this month, and the video appeared to have been loaded onto YouTube late last week. By Monday, the "woman going insane after missing her flight video" had over 400,000 hits.

In 2006, another sensational outburst by a stressed-out Hong Kong man captured the imagination of many people in this fast-paced, money-obsessed, Asian financial capital.

The middle-aged man, who chastised and swore at a youngster in a six-minute-long diatribe aboard a double decker bus, was dubbed "Bus-Uncle" and a video of the incident received close to two million hits.

His quote "I have pressure, you have pressure" became a catch-phrase and sparked navel-gazing at the pressure that many over-worked Hong Kong citizens suffer.

As for the woman at the airport, Cathay Pacific said it put her and her two travel companions on a later flight to Los Angeles, at no extra cost.

(Reporting by James Pomfret, editing by Miral Fahmy)

 

 
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