Chinese woman detained after another ‘lucky coin toss’ at aircraft engine
- Flight disrupted as staff scramble to find coins thrown by boarding passenger
A 66-year-old woman has been sentenced to 10 days in detention for throwing coins into a plane engine for good luck as she boarded a Tianjin Airlines flight in northern China on Monday.
The woman threw half a dozen coins at the engine before the flight between the Inner Mongolian cities of Hohhot and Chifeng.
The service was due to take off soon after 8am but was delayed by more than two hours as staff searched for the coins and moved the remaining passengers to another aircraft. All of the coins were recovered.
“To eliminate any hidden risks and to ensure flight safety, Tianjin Airlines quickly decided to notify passengers to change aircraft at 8.17am. At 8.40am they had all changed to the new aircraft, and the flight took off from [Hohhot Baita International Airport] at 10.06am,” the airline said.
News outlets published surveillance footage of an unidentified woman in a red jumper throwing coins into a jet engine as she boarded.
Police took the passenger, surnamed Yang, and a woman she was travelling with off the flight for further questioning.
“We sat there for several hours. They only discovered who the two people were through CCTV cameras! The police took them away. Everyone got off and switched to another plane,” a person claiming to be a passenger posted on WeChat with a photo of the full cabin.
“The cabin safety crew were great. One of them ran off the plane, found the coins and held them up, asking who threw them. Nobody admitted it and it was only through CCTV footage that they found out a woman threw them.”
One top-rated comment on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblog service suggested that offenders should have to pay compensation to the airline and fellow passengers.
And in February, another Lucky Air flight from Anqing, Anhui province, to Kunming, Yunnan province, was cancelled after a 28-year-old man tossed two coins into an engine.
