Day 1 (10 October 2014) in Xi'an, China

Woke up early to catch my flight all the way to Xi’an, China via Newark, NJ. Boarded into the plane on time, start taxing to the driveway, so far no problem. At the middle of taxing, announcement from the pilot came through, saying they just found out the malfunction of temperature balancing system. A little while later, he came back again and said that he got confirmation from the service crew that we are ok to go ahead and take off. That sounds good, right? Then just wait, wait, and wait at the middle of drive way, the plane does not move. We spent more than half an hour. The time is ticking and I got scared, fearing that I might miss my connection flight. Then the pilot came back with different story and said we have to go back to the gate so that the ground crew will look at the problem. After spending almost an hour on the middle of the drive way, we went back to the gate. The crew came and looked at it and approved to go ahead. Now I’ve only one hour to catch my connection flight in Newark. Just to make the long story short, when we arrived at the gate in Newark, I only had 5min to catch the connection flight. However, since there were more than ten passengers, who had the same connection flight as mine, my connection flight crew had been informed about the delay. Guess what? We made it safely.