Last Updated on: 18th June 2019, 08:57 pm
Somehow, it’s happened again. Another old Chinese lady has thrown things into turmoil by throwing coins into the engines of an airplane she was about to board. And like last time, it appears to have been done for the same reason. Luck.
The 66-year-old woman surnamed Wang threw six coins at the engine of a Tianjin Airlines plane just before its departure from the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot to the city of Chifeng on Monday morning, apparently in an effort to pray for a safe trip.
Fortunately, the coins were noticed by a worker. When an announcement was made for the thrower of the coins to step forward, Wang remained seated. However, she was revealed as the culprit by surveillance footage.
At first the bit about her being caught out by surveillance footage struck me as odd, but then I remembered it’s a Chinese plane. Of course there would be cameras.
She was arrested and placed under administrative detention for ten days. That sounds ominous, am I wrong?
The passengers, meanwhile, made it safely to their destination after a two hour delay that unsurprisingly included a plane switch.
This happening once is nuts. It happening twice is insane. But what if I told you that this is now the seventh time that someone has done this in the past two years? Is there even a word for that?
We’ve covered the first and for now the last, so here’s a summary of the others to fill in the gaps.
This was followed several months later by a 76-year-old granny flinging coins into the engine of a Lucky Air flight from the Anhui city of Anqing to Kunming. The woman was detained but appears to have never been prosecuted.
Then, at the Anqing airport in January, a China Eastern Airlines flight was delayed when workers found two coins lying on the ground near the plane’s engine. When questioned, none of the passengers fessed up to having done the flinging.
What, no cameras?
And it seems that the old folks are setting a bad example for the youngsters.
In February, again at the Anqing airport, a 28-year-old male passenger was taken into custody after trying to chuck coins into the engine of a Lucky Air plane while boarding, believing that they would keep the flight safe from hazard.
Last month, yet another Lucky Air flight was delayed when two female passengers were spotted chucking coins off the airbridge before getting on their plane at the airport in Jinan. Both of the women were reported to be in their mid-twenties.
Finally, earlier this month, a 31-year-old man was arrested for throwing coins before boarding a Hainan Airlines flight at the Wuhan airport. He later explained to police that he was acting on advice from his mother-in-law who wanted to ensure the safety of his wife and the couple’s four-month-old daughter.
Sure. the one guy in the world who pays attention to his mother-in-law has to be this one.
And it might be time for a name change for Lucky Air. Or does that have to wait until the luck runs out and somebody actually dies?
Far be it from me to judge anyone’s culture or beliefs, but there’s not a country in the world where tossing anything at a plane is a good idea. If I’m wrong, remind me to stay away from it, especially if getting there involves flying.