More than 45 percent of flight delays in 2004 were caused by airlines instead of natural factors, Tuesday's Beijing Times reported.

Statistics from the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) back up passenger suspicions that bad airline service has often caused delays -- not the weather, air control or airports, as the airlines claimed.

Often the real reasons are bad flight schedule and mechanical malfunctioning or lacking preparation and passengers want compensation for the extra wait they have endured. But as a rule airlines are only prepared to provide food and accommodation for flight delays due to bad weather.

The CAAC in 2004 issued guidelines saying that passengers should be given compensation if the fight delays were the airline's responsibility. But there is no reliable channel for passengers to judge the real reason of the flight.

It was reported that there have been several hundred disputes over flight delays in the past year, some of which resulted in serious clashes.

In order to improve the poor image of domestic airlines, the CAAC has released a special regulation to strengthen the supervision of airline operation. It also vowed to punish those airlines with bad service records.

China's civil aviation punctuality set a record of 79.9 percent last year, 0.1 percentage higher than that of 2003, according to statistics. But it still did not reach the expected standard of 80 percent set by the CAAC, the paper said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2005)