China’s Horrible Flight Delays. Makes Doing Business In China Even Tougher.

As most everyone who flies around China already knows, flight delays are maddeningly common there. As anyone who has been doing much flying around China in the last few months already knows, those flight delays are becoming even more common and even longer.

And now Business Week tells us that things are only going to get worse. In China’s Horrible Flight Delays Are About to Get Worse, Business Week’s Beijing Bureau Chief Dexter Roberts informs us of the following:

Those who fly China’s not-so-friendly skies are about to spend even more time grounded. “Passengers in east and central China will face mass flight delays until Aug. 15, the China Daily reported on July 22.

China’s official English language paper cited as its source a report by news.cnr.cn, the website of China National Radio. National radio reporters, in turn, spoke to China’s civil aviation authority, which confirmed that delays are expected at Hongqiao and Pudong airports in Shanghai, as well as in major cities nearby, including Nanjing, Hangzhou, Hefei, Wuxi, Jinan, and Qingdao.

Great. Our China lawyers are already having to adjust. Just last week, one of them was to go to from Beijing to Wuhan to meet with a client at 5:00 p.m. Rather than risk her being late, we decided to fly her in the day before. Guess what happened? The client’s flight was delayed and the meeting did not take place until the following morning. Either way, we sprang for an extra night in a hotel and all because we cannot rely on the flight schedule.

Hardly any foreign companies doing business in China have not already or will not be impacted by this. What are you seeing out there?