Chinese K-pop fans force airline to empty aircraft

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Three Chinese K-pop fans stirred criticisms for forcing an airline to empty plane minutes before take-off, causing the flight to delay about an hour.

Two mainland Chinese and a Hong Kong passengers, who were reportedly fans of a Korean pop group, suddenly asked the crew that they wanted to get off the flight and demanded refunds of their tickets on a Seoul-bounded Korean Air flight at Hong Kong International Airport last Saturday, reported the Korean Times on Monday.

The three fans didn't give any specific reasons and just told the cabin crew they had urgent matters to tackle with, forcing 360 passengers on board to disembark and go through the security check again, which had delayed the flight about an hour.

K-pop group "Wanna One" appeared on the red carpet of 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong, Friday. /VCG Photo

The three passengers were later confirmed as the fans of “Wanna One”, a K-pop boy group who performed on stage at the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong last Friday, according to the Korean Times.

Regarding the flight regulations, all the passengers need to disembark and go through security check once again even if one passenger gets off the plane, in case of any dangerous items left on the flight.

VCG Photo

Due to the Korean Airline's refund policy, the company was obliged to give refunds to the three passengers as they reserved one first-class ticket, one business ticket and one economy class ticket respectively. The company was also required to compensate the remaining passengers with refunds of tickets and pay a fine to the Hong Kong airport because of the delay.

After the incident, the airline called Hong Kong police for further investigation. However, as there were no physical injuries and complaints caused by the incident, police said they couldn't issue an investigation over the case.

Fans cheering for their favorite stars at the 2017 Fans Carnival held in Beijing. /VCG Photo

Incidents of crazy fans buying flight tickets just to follow their idols into the departure gate are common nowadays. Some fans take advantage of the refund policy of airline companies and manage to get most of their money back after they see their idols at the airport.

A Korean Air official told the Korea Times that although such cases were not rare, the airport staff had difficulty dealing with them. However, it was the first time that such fans got on a plane and rest of the passengers were asked to get off for another security check.

Earlier in May, around 20 fans who booked the same flight with their star had caused a flight to be delayed over two hours when they made all-out efforts to record their idol's journey at Beijing International Airport. The incident soon became a hot topic on Weibo, China's Twitter-equivalent, as the hashtag #CrazyFansCausedFlightDelayed has been clicked for more than 123.9 million times.

As fans gradually become a threat to the airport security, China's civil aviation authorities issued a series of regulations in July, in an effort to prevent crazy fans who throng to airports for a closer look at their idols from disturbing public security in the airport.