It must rank as one of the most public temper tantrums of all time, dpa reported.
By Sunday morning, nearly 4.5 million people worldwide had gone online to see video of a middle-aged woman have an emotional meltdown after missing a flight out of Hong Kong.
The video clip of the unidentified passenger screaming and throwing herself to ground after arriving at the departure gate at Hong Kong International Airport too late to board a San Francisco-bound flight has clocked up new viewers at the rate of more than 600,000 a day.
By Sunday morning, a little over a week after the video was first uploaded onto YouTube, the total number of viewers exceeded by half a million the number that passed through Hong Kong's airport, one of the world's busiest, in the whole of January.
The clip could be on its way to become one of the most viewed 100 clips of all time on YouTube.
The video was recorded on February 4 when the woman and two male travelling companions arrived at 5:05 pm the boarding gate for flight CX782 to San Francisco - the time of the plane's scheduled departure.
When the smartly-dressed woman discovers their baggage has been offloaded, she first tries to barge her way past a security guard to get to the air bridge, then throws herself screaming onto the floor in front of the boarding gate.
Some of the 15,000 comments posted at the clip were sympathetic, wondering if she was "on her way to visit a dying sister" and the flight could have "been a matter of life and death."
But most others condemned her behaviour.
"I'd like to see her reaction when she finds out this video made her world famous," one viewer comments while another remarks: "I feel bad for her kids who have to deal with 4 million people and counting laughing at their mum."
The woman and her travelling companions were put on a flight to San Francisco that left only a few hours later once she had recovered from her outburst.
Despite the huge viewer figures for the clip, the identity of the woman yesterday remained a mystery. Believed to be from mainland China, she is thought to be lying low in San Francisco until the fuss dies down.
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