About Sky Vision

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If you live in China or travel to China often, perhaps you have flown a few Chinese airlines. How do you choose airlines in China? I was once active with Star Alliance and I tended to go with Air China. Once I relocated to Shanghai I began to fly China Eastern. After almost 10 years loyal with Chinese Eastern, most recently I made a switch. Now the lesser-known China Southern Airlines becomes my main carrier in China. 

Despite its less-talked-about status, China Southern has emerged to be the biggest airline in China and the 4th largest in the world. Currently it operates a modern fleet consisting of 770 aircraft. What I like the most is that they use the newest twin-aisle aircraft on their key domestic routes. I like China Southern’s paring strategy, which also manifests they compete aggressively and they want to keep an edge on the product/journey they are offering. On my frequent travel in between Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing I fly 787 and 777-300ER often. I would definitely go for a 777-300ER if I come across one. Most airlines operate this aircraft for international flights. You barely find it on a domestic route. The cabin feels very bright and Spacious. Air is fresh. Seats are much more comfortable than those designed for domestic-only flights. China Southern has a three-class seating on their 777-300ER. On domestic routes, you can even get a free upgrade to the Premium Economy if you paid a full-fare or a member of their Sky Pearl Club. I have flown this aircraft often in between Shanghai and Guangzhou. Each time I enjoyed very much. 

New and large aircraft often means better in-flight entertainment programs. In among the Chinese airlines, China Southern provides the most interesting and diverse selections. On my most recent flights, I watched a French movie La promesse de l’aube (Promise at Dawn) which I loved dearly. I also watched a Russian film Viking and two German comedies. All these movies came out in 2017. I feel I was able to catch up with the world cinema by flying China Southern.  In addition to these international movies, it has a large selection of Hollywood recent releases, classics, Asian and Chinese movies. I can’t list them all. I can only say I was impressed and entertained. 

One thing you might easily overlook but it is important to know is that you will always get a bridge to board your airplane if you fly China Southern. What it means is that you don’t have to walk a long distance to get to a basement-like area of the airport to hop on a shuttle bus in order to board your airplane. The shuttle bus is a pain at the Chinese airports. It can be very crowded and sometimes travels a long way. China Eastern is notorious for the shuttle bus ride. If you fly out of Hongqiao with China Eastern, 9 out 10 you will find yourself to be on a shuttle bus. In China airlines have to pay an extra fee to park at a gate with a bridge. Obviously China Southern is paying a higher price for its parking lots than its competitors. The extra they paid affords passengers with more convenience and comfort. This cannot be overlooked.   

China Southern is based in Guangzhou. This is one of the reasons for many people living up-north are less familiar with the airline. In May 2018 Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport opened its 2nd Terminal which was dedicated to China Southern. This is the first time in China that a terminal is occupied by only one carrier. Not only is China Southern competing aggressively in the major cities, it also enjoys a niche in China’s wild west and runs flights in remote touristy regions. For instance, if you fly from Wulumuqi to Kashgar, most likely your flight is a Chinese Southern. Last year when my friend and I were traveling to Kanas Lake, an area bordering Russia and Mongolia, we decided to take a 50-munite flight from Wulumuqi rather than drive. Serendipitously we boarded a China Southern airplane. 

Have you looked into how long your organization has not updated the training materials? 

Given Project Management as an example, its content, techniques and managing approaches are evolving especially with the emergence and prevalence of Agile. If your existing content was developed 3 or even 5 years ago and has not been updated, it sets an alarm that certain part of the material has been out-of-date. The result can be that your customers, the trainees may not feel the training content closely relevant to their work and their satisfaction to the training trends down. 

I have one particular customer in Project Management who I have suggested and even urged to update the training material for almost two years. They are a global organization whose projects come from Marketing, Supply Chain and Web Portal development etc. For many of the web and software development projects, Agile techniques and approaches are applicable and should be introduced. Unfortunately the knowledge is not included in the training content. Employees can get confused in the classroom to apply the traditional approach to their web portal development projects in real life. 

One size does not fit all. Choosing the right project management techniques, and train people to learn and apply the new techniques are critically important for saving organizational resources and helping people gain competencies. I have conducted multiple workshops. The most successful ones are those that the trainer delivers exactly what the trainees expect to learn. In short, the customer gets exactly what they needed. 

The Project Management Institute (PMI) will modify its exam content for the PMP designation at the end of 2019. The new content will integrate more Agile related best practices. This manifests that Agile has been gaining recognition in project management. While it does not say that traditional project management is out-of-fashion, it does say that your organization has to constantly innovate to keep pace with the new knowledge, new techniques and new demand.

For leadership training, project and program management best practices and techniques in Asia Pacific, contact Sky Vision. 

October 2019

Success does not come to any of us easily. Here we refer less to the definition of success but more about our feelings of success.   

Mindset – It is all about mindset. Our mindset programs our brain and determines our action. It is very important we keep a growth mindset and vision a successful outlook for ourselves. Many times our mindset is confined by factors such as past experience, family background and workplace environment etc. This requires us to constantly challenge ourselves to think out of the box so that our mindset helps us continuously grow as opposed to fix on things that are unchangeable. 

Action – Action trumps everything. We have to put our thoughts and talking into action. No action no growth. No action no result. Only with action can we take ourselves to a journey to our dreams. Action is the reflection of mindset. 

Environment – Environment is one of the critical factors to determine mindset, mood and feelings. Have you ever heard of "if you are not happy, change your environment"? People are the products of their environment. Do a no-nonsense evaluation of your current environment and ask if it is helping and motivating you. Questions can be like "is it sunny enough? does it make me feel motivated? do I meet worldly and open-minded people? do I have deep conversations with these people?  

People - You are who you are close to. You may have heard of that we are the average of the first five people we spend most time with. Make sure you are surrounded by people who are positive, who motivate and inspire you, who challenge you, who not only care about you but are compassionate in helping and contributing to a larger community. 

Risk - We cannot grow without taking risks. Life is an adventure.  Adventure means risk. Security provides us stability but flat stability means little growth. Our personal journey should be comprised of both the desire of seeking security as well as the guts of taking risks. The latter yields a much better result than staying put. 

When you purchase an air ticket, you entrust that airline with your travel. You board the plane and pass onto your personal property, your luggage as check-in baggage. In the summer of 2022 in Europe, your check-in baggage can turn your trip entirely upside down.  

Here I was. I bought an Austrian Airlines (OS) ticket for a journey from Innsbruck to London on July 30. I packed literally everything into my luggage as OS only allowed 8kg on hand-carry and mine already felt heavy with the laptop. I love to travel, especially in Europe. To stay away from constant lockdowns in Shanghai and better connect the world, I scheduled 3 months working as a digital nomad in Europe between July and September. I brought both summer and early autumn clothing with me, as well as handbags, shoes, toiletries, necessary electronic devices, keys to my apartments, gifts purchased along the way etcetera, etcetera. 

A trip from Innsbruck to London Heathrow takes approximately four hours including an hour of transit in Vienna. I would've never imagined that things could go wrong on such a simple journey. It was very unnerving to hear that OS failed to load my baggage on time for the flight to London. It then transpired that it went missing at Vienna Airport. It further irritated and angered me that no one from OS ever contacted me for status update and financial compensation.  I lived on two T-shirts and a jean without my own toiletries for a few days and hoped that it would magically arrive. It did not. The lack of communication from OS is appalling. 

Three distinctive problems with OS exposed through my experience:

1. Chaotic and incompetent operations

Despite the fact that baggage loss is not eliminated, it is quite impossible for an airline to lose a baggage within its own networks. For OS, it was a feat to miss my luggage in its home base - Vienna Airport on a 4-hour journey. Don't blame the summer travel crowds either. It was OS's own initiative to sell the tickets and solicit travelers.  

2.  Staff lie and maltreatment of passengers

 1) When I was at the gate of Vienna Airport boarding the flight to London, I particularly asked the OS staff  if my luggage had also arrived. My sensibility nurtured out of 25-year industry experience casted doubt on my luggage's whereabout. Two of them answered "Yes it arrived. Don't worry about it."  OS CEO needs to be personally responsible for her staff to lie. Obviously OS's practice is to "grab the passenger and deal with their stuff later". Such behavior shows the airline's deep disrespect and unconcern for passenger's property. It is abuse of power and a rampant violation of consumer rights.  

 2) On the apology letter for delaying baggage, OS stated that the delays could be resolved in 24 hours. Speaking with their agent in London, it became 48 hours. Then it went to 5 days, then 5+9, and finally 21 days. During these benchmarking days not on a single occasion did OS reach me  to explain what I could do, what a passenger's rights were, and how much financial compensation I was entitled to. They disappeared as if nothing had happened. I felt nothing but this airline had no sense of obligation for taking responsibility.  Its stance of ignorance, unprofessionalism and lack of customer service were something I've not seen in aviation.   

3. Poorly-designed and dysfunctional online systems and errors 

On the luggage receipt shown in the picture, the letter OS typed as "0S", an error of typing a numeric zero instead of the letter O. When I was reporting a missing luggage online, the address for delivery could not be edited even that it showed an editing icon on the page. The feedback email could not be sent after I filed a claim quoting "technical problems" but did not show where the problems were. While I was inputting the mileage numbers that OS solicited, the system said the numbers were too short to be correct for both UA Mileage Plus and CA Phoenix. In fact both were correct. Such ill-designed and dysfunctional systems are bound to generating errors and mistakes. I gather there must have been many lost baggages by OS.  When I was talking to a staff member about the missing luggage at London Heathrow, he responded with a sneer saying "Well, that's Austrian Airlines."  I only regretted that I knew its reputation too late.    

Despite Austria being a beautiful country to visit, Austrian Airlines are untrustworthy and incompetent. As an aviation consultant, I believe while we praise and promote the good, we also have to disclose the bad. It is our professional duty to equip people with information and knowledge so that they can make better choices and decisions and do not fall into victims easily. Don't overlook the matter of missing luggage. It is your luggage. Your things. You paid for its travel. The airlines have no right nor excuse of losing it.          

Chad Sbragia was the first US deputy assistant secretary of defence for China set up during Donald Trump’s administration. He held policy research leadership roles in the US Marine Corps and Indo-Pacific Command and is a research analyst at the Institute for Defence Analyses, a Virginia-based think tank. He spoke to the Post on the sidelines of the Xiangshan defence forum in Beijing. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus.

How would you evaluate the progress of the resumption of US-China defense contacts and exchanges so far?

The re-establishment of defense contacts and exchanges, I do think is important. They were on a good footing, [with] a good plan in place and how that fell off the cliff early in the Biden administration was really kind of remarkable. It takes away opportunities to correct the record, to communicate clearly. It takes away opportunities to perhaps find some common ground in areas of cooperation.

We have several hundred US service members that are still missing someplace in China, [a reference to troops killed in the second world war] and that was an area of cooperation that lasted for a long period of time. That’s an area of cooperation that’s now two years behind for no reason.

Now that they’ve restarted [defence contacts], the way I would characterise it, is the defence relationship has partially restarted.

Neither defence establishment restarted any of the senior dialogues. The most senior dialogue they restarted was the deputy assistant secretary-level dialogue, the defence policy coordination talks. But the other higher level dialogues, at the assistant secretary level or the undersecretary level or higher, none of those were restarted. That’s an anomaly in a relationship, and it’s also confusing about why.

I think that’s a great deal of risk when you have no mechanism to resolve larger strategic policy disagreements in place. It raises questions: does either side expect to resolve large policy disagreements? Or is there no interest on either side in resolving those disagreements?

There are a lot of questions that bring out about what was restored, and why things were not restored. It’s good the [defence] secretary [Lloyd Austin] set up a call.

I don’t know who his counterparts are now. [Chinese Defence Minister] Dong Jun is not even on the CMC [Central Military Commission] so technically, the secretary has several counterparts, but Dong Jun isn’t one of them now. So that’s going to be a problem.

With the theatre command talks resuming recently, how would you compare the effectiveness of command-level exchanges between now and the time when you were in service?

The types of questions that they could or should work on now are a little bit harder. [It] looks like they were kind of just passing talking points, which is not bad. You need to hear where they’re at at any given moment, changes of lexicon. Those things are important.

You need to have the opportunity to very clearly articulate and communicate what the US position is. But ideally you’re also having an opportunity to deepen your understanding of the other side, not just what their talking points are, but to see and to get a feel for what it looks like.

What’s their readiness state, what’s their professionalism like? What’s their political control and authority? What’s their discipline over their forces at a strategic, operational, tactical level? I want to see their equipment, right? Is it a threat or not? Do they know how to fly things or drive things or sail things? Those things are all manifestations of confidence for the measures that really do matter.

The Indo-Pacific commander hadn’t talked to any counterparts in China for quite a while. I remember back in the 2000s that the Indo-Pacific commander would come to China multiple times a year, three, sometimes four times a year, and talk to very senior leaders.

Having these visits helps reduce security dilemma anxiety. When they come to visit, I’m going to poke my nose around, I’m going to look around, I’m going to assess, and I’m going to understand you better. And you’re gonna do the same thing and I’m gonna try to be pretty transparent with you. I’m certainly gonna be frank and honest with you, because the jobs of both sides are to avert conflict, not to generate conflict. So the way we did that was by talking to each other and visiting.

Do you see these visits resuming any time soon?

It’s a different time, and the dynamics have changed. [We’re] not going to go back to that.

But I think on the Chinese side, they started to downplay their desire to talk to him, because the Indo-Pacific commander is a war-fighting commander. He’s an obstacle. It’s much easier to go back to Washington DC and talk to folks who were more receptive to the Chinese than the Indo-Pacific commander. He’s the principal kind of warfighter that they would confront.

But in that light, I think that’s why both sides actually need to be talking at that level. He’s not just a theatre commander. He’s bigger than that. He’s responsible for half the planet. He has more strategic span of capacity than the entire PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has. So he has a role in having a relationship, and traditionally has had with military region commanders and now theatre commanders.

The Indo-Pacific commander also has to have a point of contact that he can have as an interlocutor in Beijing on the senior staff here, ideally with the Joint Staff Department, and he needs to maintain both of those.

The United States is having its election very soon. If Donald Trump wins, do you think the resumption of the military dialogue will be reversed?

I think in the US, they often say that personnel is policy, meaning what personnel you bring on is often a reflection of what policies are enacted. That’s the case of any administration. Who he brings on in key billets will probably be a better determinant of the restoration or the expansion of current defence relations with China.

One thing that I think, at least for a Trump administration, is that I think he’s got a track record that he does not fear to talk to anybody. He talked to Kim Jong-un. Nobody in the past would do that. People would always say that’s crazy. So I don’t think instinctually that Donald Trump would say that talking between the two militaries or the two defence establishments is a bad thing. I think he’s just the opposite. In fact, he’s eager to prove that the United States shouldn’t be and isn’t scared of talking to anybody.

During 2018, 2019, 2020, beginning of 2021, the defence relationship had extremely robust and constant communications with each other through multiple pathways from the secretary level down, and it hadn’t been like that for a decade.

So we really emphasised that a lot, and the PLA side was very receptive to that. I talked to my counterpart constantly. I talked to their representative in Washington constantly. Our embassy folks here were constantly talking to their counterparts, feeding that back in kind of a big loop as it’s supposed to. There were more backchannel communication paths to more non-official sources that were occurring. It was heavy, and often.

During those years, the Chinese side actually initiated calls to what we call the DTL, the defence telephone. The Chinese senior leaders had never initiated a call to the United States since the DTL was started in 2008. The US was always the one asking for the call, and finally they started asking, but I think that’s a reflection of that there was value to calls. And they weren’t always pleasant, but they were extremely frank and actually very productive calls to include during Covid periods.

Would there be statements and reports about the calls every time?

Not always. But the Chinese are usually pretty good about doing [this]. A good case in point is the whole, you’ve probably heard about the issue, like the October surprise issue. That was a good case of [when] we saw the Chinese had a misperception [about a possible drone attack on Chinese-held islands in the South China Sea ahead of the 2020 presidential election].

It was a gross misperception, gross miscalculation. And Secretary [Mark] Esper directed calls to PLA counterparts on his behalf. And the [defence] department did. We explained to the Chinese that there is what we saw as a bad miscalculation. They accepted it. They reflected it in their media the next day.

At the end of the administration, when I talked to my counterpart, he said [Central Military Commission] chairman Xi [Jinping] had accepted that and paused military escalation because of those calls. That’s a great example of how having steady, routinised forms of communication can really avert a crisis that might emerge otherwise. Perfect example.

Now with less direct communication between the two militaries, is the US facing more routinizeddifficulties in understanding the PLA, such as the anti-corruption saga? What is the US assessment of Beijing’s anti-corruption efforts on its Rocket Force?

I don’t know what the cumulative US government assessment is.

But this is what is a little bit confusing to me: how much anxiety and concern China continues to have, and the utter lack of desire to have a defence relationship of any substance. [And that] is a little bit unnerving to me. You feel like you don’t need a defence relationship if you don’t think that there’s anything that’s solvable from having one.

That’s really dangerous, particularly if they don’t understand how quickly poor assumptions or assessments might arise if you don’t have conversations with each other. So that’s a big concern of mine.

Certainly for the United States, there’s a lot going on in China that is increasingly opaque, not increasingly transparent. And one of them is that, what is going on with the senior political military leadership? It is not clear to me, and I do not fully understand the changes. Those changes have not been articulated very well from China. Why is Dong Jun not on the CMC? Can you explain that to us? Why is he not a state councillor? Are you changing? Is that a new pattern? Who’s the manager of the international portfolio now within the PLA? Who would be our interlocutor if there was a crisis that you would pick? I mean, there are a thousand questions.

Could the US find out more about these questions in the past trips?

Yeah, you could at least ask. I’ve always found that if you ask them questions, the Chinese are very frank and open. They must be appropriate questions, not questions that won’t or can’t be answered. How many bombers are going to strike me on day one? – neither side can answer that question.

But can you explain to me, do you have political control in the military? That’s a legitimate question. Do you have confidence? Because that tells me a lot. Are you fully in control of them? Are they doing what you want? They don’t seem to be doing what Xi Jinping is directing them to do. They are acting still with a tremendous amount of corruption, not following orders, and not showing that they’re ensuring discipline in new recruits, in units, and in organisations below them. I mean, that’s frankly unnerving. That’s terrifying.

We’re talking about rocket forces, right? Rocket forces control nuclear weapons. Those forces? Reports of corruption are a bit concerning. No answers on anything? Catastrophic failures and oversight of equipment development? We’re not talking about small things. It’s about long-range missile systems, missile systems that are being tested and going haywire in China. They shoot missiles over Taiwan at times, if they fall short … I mean, there are a thousand reasons that you know, you start to manifest mistrust.

Defence departments do one thing, they plan to defend the national interests of the political leadership, and they’re always going to look at what’s the worst plausible case that could happen. And if you’re not transparent and open and explain those things, it’s the obligation of the other side to plan for the worst case. I think that’s what’s, in part, what we’re looking at.

Have you observed a stepping up of military and defence engagement by China with Indo-Pacific countries, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) states?

Last year at Xiangshan, Zhang Youxia [CMC vice-chairman] talked about the need to improve military diplomacy and increase its activity with other nations. He prioritised the EU nations, but I think it certainly applies also to the Asean nations. Have you seen that more over the last year? I think that’s true.

How is Washington reacting to this?

I don’t think that there’s much that is not already public. You know, increased investment, greater collaboration. Certainly, there’s been a pretty significant uptake of bringing powers that reside outside the region, or only incidentally out, inside the region. More in, right?

So, Germans, Canadians, French, the UK coming in, sending warships through, doing more, participating in more multilateral events, even on the ground [with] greater collaboration by partners and allies within the region itself, and more kind of fulsome exercises, real exercises, certainly the US and Japan, certainly the United States and Australia. Aukus is a good example. Yeah, it’s intensifying.

And for China-Russia, do you find their stepping up of joint drills alarming?

My personal opinion is it’s not that big a deal at this point. It’s a big deal in the United States, there’s always this concern that they’re going to partner up. I mean, I think the Chinese and the Russians dislike each other quite a bit.

In fact, one of the reasons that they work so hard on their relationship is to ensure that their relationship doesn’t fall apart. It turns out, certainly, the most important contribution to the relationship is the mutual hatred of the United States. They’re very aligned in what their preferred world view is, and they have a common competitor, a common enemy, which is the United States.

China, Russian military collaboration is pretty minimal, more symbolic strategically, less important, tactically or operationally. They’re just really operating next to each other. They’re really not doing a lot of combined command stuff, [but] a little bit of ballistic missile defence, some of these long-range air patrols or maritime excursions. That’s interesting. They are flying next to each other but not really doing major air combat practice.

In June, Admiral [Samuel] Paparo introduced the hellscape plan. [The head of the Indo-Pacific Command had said the US military planned to create an “unmanned hellscape” in the event of a PLA attack on Taiwan.]

It aims to use a variety of drones to buy time for the US military in Taiwan. Given that China is the biggest producer of drones in the world, while the plan would involve a lot of low-cost drones, do you think it’s a feasible plan?

You know, he didn’t provide enough fidelity for the PLA to assess the veracity of that concept, but it’s very clear that that’s the trajectory of where everything’s going. The PLA writes constantly about different versions of networked and autonomous weapon systems, including drones of all sorts: air, space, sea, surface, subsurface and even deep sea, so that’s a different aspect.

And that’s where everything is going. Stuff that can be launched from the shoreline, from deep inland, from a boat, from a submarine, from an aircraft … There are not just drones, but all autonomous weapons systems that are going to be coming from every part of every domain.

I mean, it’s incredible, and that’s just the trajectory. So as a hellscape, it hasn’t manifested as a specific detailed plan backed up by capabilities. It’s a conceptual intent, but as such, it’s common, right, from the Chinese side too.

Many of the PLA drills around Taiwan are believed to be practising some sort of naval blockade. Do you think it’s probably a way for the PLA to use a naval blockade in the event that it really needs to resort to armed reunification?

Is a naval blockade a plausible option? I don’t think it’s as plausible as a lot of other experts do, because I think there’s a lot of significant strategic downside to that. It’s certainly plausible. And even an invasion campaign kind of starts off with a blockade function. So you’re always going to do a blockade. It’s just whether you add an invasion. So that’s good for the Chinese flexibility.

But it’s ugly; a blockade is a bad strategic condition. I don’t think China would choose that for a variety of reasons, but maybe there are reasons why. They will determine what their priorities and options are.

What would be the reason they would opt for it?

One of the reasons you choose blockade, as opposed to an invasion, is always, in the end, you can say, I’m done with the blockade, and de-escalate. I’ve taught a lesson. I can go home, and I can at least characterise it as not being a loss.

It doesn’t invest you totally or cement you into a permanent course of action. If you try an invasion and it fails, you can’t hide that you failed if you didn’t take it. That’s not the end either but if it’s a blockade, say “OK if this works, it’s great”.

If it doesn’t manifest quickly enough or the United States comes too fast – if they come or the Taiwanese hold out, or somebody else comes, I mean – it does give the political leadership a way to say “I’m not going to jump all the way into the pool, but I’m getting in halfway. If I need to, I’ll go even further but I can get out and still have my hair dry.”

As a last question, as this is the third time you’ve attended the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, do you think face-to-face events and visits are helpful for people to better understand China, as people from China and the US are having less interaction than in previous years?

Absolutely, there is something you could interact and see first hand. It develops a lasting influence and that’s good.

There’s a risk sometimes of people taking the anecdotal pieces that they see from visiting or even living here, and not contextualising it within a broader evidentiary base.

Here is the analogy that I use back in the United States. Nasa needs astronauts who’ve been up in space. They know what weightlessness feels like, they’ve run across the moon and bounced on it … But you can’t run Nasa just off of the astronauts. You need astronomers who are deeply studied in astrophysics and orbital dynamics and geometry. Those people are really important.

Ideally you have somebody who can do both, spend some time in China but also study China independently and don’t let their time in China shape entirely their understanding of China.

The United States used to have this cadre of younger people [and] they’re really good, solid folks. They’re astronauts and astronomers; now that’s all you get: astronomers. They’ve looked at it from afar, not up close, and are not as experienced. The same applies to the PRC side.

I was stunned last year when I came here. I sat and talked with some Chinese officials and some of the think tanks, who are famous folks here, and they discussed their perception of the United States, United States policy or activities. And I was stunned [by] how just completely wrong they were. These are people who are America watchers, people supposedly the experts in China to watch the United States and feed that into leadership decision making. They just had some horrible assumptions or assessments.

The point being is when you don’t have those times to interact, one of the manifestations of that is that people could start to form poor assumptions, and those flawed assessments feed on each other … There’s a great danger in that. So once folks for both sides come together, even if they don’t like to talk to each other, one of the things it does is [that] it makes both sides confront their assumption that may be wrong, and they have to question them, at least they have to defend them.

Two good news for the aviation industry came out this week. On Monday morning of November 9th, the American companies Pfizer and BioNtech announced their vaccine BNT162b2 had proved 90% effective in its Phase 3 trial. This is such an uplifting news for humanity. It marks the beginning of the end for the covid-19 pandemic. Later on the same day, another news broke out that FAA could end Boeing 737 MAX grounding on November 18th, only a few days to go from now on. The possible lift of the ban coupled with the vaccine news will mark a new era for Boeing and the aviation industry. People will come out to fly. Boeing is poised to be on a trajectory of recovery. World travel will resume. People’s lives will go back to normal. Though the final normalcy will take time to happen, the vaccine news will change the psychology of people. Despite the continuing surges in COVID-19 cases in the West, the world will begin to look at the pandemic differently. COVID-19 now is a curable disease that will only take some time to perish.

About two weeks ago, rhetoric of the Chinese officials was "Shanghai is not locked down and will not lock down". No one is saying it these days. Now Shanghai is under lockdown. To our knowledge the longest period that some people have experienced is 24 days as of April 5, 2022. 

A few facts are worth to know to understand the dynamics of this lockdown.

1, Hoarding began at the night of March 27 when the government suddenly announced that Pudong will be locked down at 5am in the next morning. 

2, The first question family and friends ask each other these days is "Do you have enough food?". Currently both Chinese and expat communities have a prevalent fear of not having enough food to sustain this lockdown.

3, Fear about being locked in a quarantine center runs much higher than being affected by Omicron.

4, Though there are still debates about the validity of "dynamic zero policy", criticism to the policy is fierce in more educated populace and especially from doctors and nurses. Some of whom are prominent disease-control experts.    

6, Due to the criticism and Shanghai's overwhelming incongruence to the zero policy, Beijing has sent a vice premier Ms. Sun to Shanghai to direct and supervise the "battle". 

7, More than 38,000 medical staff from military and 15 provinces have arrived Shanghai for assistance. 

8. Spring and Juneyao Airlines, the two privately-owned airlines based in Shanghai operate the most of flights each day. China Eastern and Shanghai airlines have dramatically reduced their flights to basically only one flight to one major city each day. 

9. Most train services have stopped. It has been reported that train spreads the virus to more Chinese cities than flights.

10. A new Chinese word 方舱医院 is created from this lockdown. It literally means "square warehouse hospital" which refers to the isolated quarantine centers. 

The above facts are as of April 5, 2022. Situation changes everyday. The most imminent is still lack of food for almost every household. 

April 5, 2022

There are videos shared on wechat showing parents on the streets in direct clashes with the "police", whose true identities are thought to be military personnel. 

On April 14, news of converting a primary school in Zhangjiang, Pudong District into a quarantine center stroke a chord with parents. They managed to go on the street standing in front of the gate of the school protecting. The video shows columns of "Dabai" (people wearing hazmat suits) marching towards the crowds and finally clashing with them. People shouted in anger "inhumane", "bastards" and "why people's policemen hit its own people?!" 

Another image on wechat showing a woman with a loudspeaker telling people why they have to protect this conversion soon got censored for viewing.