Who granted fans the convenience to "precisely" track down their idols?

Recently, a male celebrity's studio openly condemned "barbaric fans" for repeatedly changing the celebrity and his team members' flight information. Currently, this has been reported to the police. Before this incident, there was another occasion where a male idol was seated in the business class section on a plane from Hangzhou to Beijing. When the plane landed and was still taxiing, many fans flooded the aisle towards the business class section, and ignored flight attendants efforts to stop them.

The above incidents demonstrated fans had full access to the flight information of their idols. Such information makes fangirling become "precise", so fans can buy tickets to be on the same plane with their idol, or buy a first-class ticket to "run into" their idol in the waiting lounge and cancel the ticket afterwards. They can also wait for their idol in the airport according to flight schedules. Though there are possibilities that certain celebrities might have leaked their own flight information to attract fans to come, the main reason behind this phenomenon is the lack of protection of travelers' information in the airlines ticketing system.

Fans cannot trail their idols when they have no information. To prevent fans from entering the airport or onto planes is a necessary safety measure. To solve the issue of information leakage, we need to start from the airlines ticketing system, to create a protection system that effectively protects travelers' information. This is necessary for the safety of all passengers.

To do so, it is necessary to strengthen the authority management of the current airline ticketing system. Currently, every airline company needs the name, personal identity number, and cell phone number for passengers to complete online check-in. Some companies even require passengers to enter the specific flight number. Such information is personal privacy which regular people cannot attain. Hence, the problem of the constant changes in the flight information of celebrities and their team members reflect an existing issue in the current airline ticketing system. Under regular circumstances, it is already difficult to change a traveler's boarding information and nearly impossible to change the boarding information of multiple people without systematic neglect in management oversight. This defect is not only a violation of the rights of certain passengers, but also threatens flight safety.

At present, all airline ticketing information need to be transferred into the Eterm system (passenger seat-selection system). However, since there are many ticketing agencies in China, this creates difficulty in the system's qualification management. The lack of standardization of the transfer and usage of the Eterm system can easily cause passenger information leaks. Not to mention that from the Eterm system to passengers, there are airline companies, third-party airline Apps, ticketing agencies, online ticketing websites and all other links, each may cause information leakage. Therefore, to solve the information leakage problem systematically, there has to be a comprehensive planning on the construction of the ticketing system, institutions that might cause information leakage must be disqualified and removed from the ticketing system.

Aside from solving the information leakage of airline passengers from the source, it also is helpful to create a "blacklist" policy to restrict irrational fan behavior. For fans who behave out of line and violate safety regulations, if they disobey the rules after a warning, they can enter a "blacklist" that forbids them from entering airports or buying flight tickets. The ban period can be based on the severity of their violations. These preparations should put an end to fangirling behaviors that have created threats to flight safety.

Writer: Chen Cheng