The great heave forward... Chinese passengers are forced to push broken-down plane

All together now: Passengers join airport staff to move the jet off the runway at Zhengzhou Airport

Lost luggage, long queues in a packed airport, or a grilling by customs officials - the tribulations do not necessarily end for air travellers when their flight is over. But few can have been asked to get out and help push their plane along the runway, as these passengers in China were after their jet broke down just after landing. The CRJ7 plane, which had just flown some 500 miles from Guilin in the south of the country with 69 passengers and seven crew members on board, conked out before it could taxi to the arrivals terminal at Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province.

At first, airport staff were the only ones required to help push, but they could not budge the plane.

Even with the combined muscle power of staff and passengers, it took the group nearly two hours to push the plane about 1,000 yards to a side lane.

'Thank God it was only a 20-ton medium-sized airplane,' said one of the airport workers. 'If it were a big plane, it would have knocked us out.'

The jet was still parked in the side lane today waiting for technicians arriving on the next flight to fix the problem.