The long, cold, hungry wait for a flight to take off

Since Beijing embraced its first snow in a year last Sunday, I felt sort of relieved and lucky when we were on board at 3 pm after having waited in the lobby for six hours - the flight was set to take off at 11:50 am.

Unexpectedly, the nightmare just began. The passengers were informed the airplanes were waiting in line to have snow on the wings cleared, and 60 airplanes were arranged ahead of ours for departure.