1) The small airplane in the center of the picture is a very old Russian fighter. It, along with other airplanes of the same breed, effectively shut down Nanning's airport for 2.5 hours on the date of my flight. I was in contact with TravelinmanS via WeChat at the time, who provided me updates through the app that he likes (Very Zhun)... we were "#2 for takeoff" throughout the course of the 2.5 hour airport shutdown. I wasn't really bothered by the delay because I've come to accept the fact that NNG-SHA is almost always a 6 hour ordeal.

2) Flight number = HO1172. I usually take the 630p MU flight, which occasionally awards me with a tiny number of FF points, but I decided to mix things up based on the theory that HO couldn't possibly be worse than MU. In fact, it wasn't worse than MU, but it wasn't better either (they codeshare with MU).

3) The weather was fine in both Nanning and Shanghai on my travel date.