Spring Airlines vows to retain blacklisting policy

Spring Airlines, the Shanghai-based budget carrier, will continue to blacklist unruly customers, a company spokesperson told the Global Times Wednesday.

Zhang Wuan, a spokesperson for the airline, acknowledged the company's policy after the domestic newspaper Legal Daily reported the practice Tuesday.

"A small minority of passengers misbehaves during delays," Zhang told the Global Times. "Some refuse to board or leave the plane, which hurts us financially and wastes the time of other passengers."

The company has employed a blacklist since 2007, which prevents specific customers from booking tickets on any of the airline's flights, Zhang said. Spring puts customers on the list when they behave aggressively with airline staff, though they can get removed from the list by contacting the airline and signing a pledge to alter their behavior in the future.

The policy came to light Tuesday after Legal Daily reported a story about a resident of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, who discovered in June that she could no longer book tickets with the airline after taking one of its flights on April 30.

On that date, Liu's flight to Shanghai was delayed for eight hours, the paper reported. Some passengers, including Liu, refused to board until the airline compensated them for the delay. After Liu failed to book a ticket in June, a customer service representative told her that she was banned from the airline because she took the 200 yuan ($31.38) in compensation for the April flight, according to the paper.

In 2004, the Civil Aviation Administration of China ruled that all domestic airlines must compensate passengers for delays, though it gave Spring an exemption in 2005.

Zhang Qihuai, an aviation law expert with China University of Political Science and Law, said that the county's contract law prohibits airlines from refusing passengers' reasonable demands for transportation.　

"They are depriving people of their freedom to travel," Zhang said Wednesday.