The strange and repeated incidents have ignited conversations online about the thought process behind someone’s decision to throw a piece of metal near a highly sophisticated device, particularly one that is critical to people’s safety. The coin-tossing superstition has been borrowed by the Chinese from the Western tradition of throwing coins into fountains to bring good luck, witch by the way, is much safer.
In China, a female passenger was detained by police after she threw six coins at a plane for good luck before its take-off.
The 66-year-old woman was removed from the Tianjin Airlines flight after admitting to tossing the coins as she was boarding the plane at Hohhot Baita International Airport in Inner Mongolia on Tuesday, according to a statement from the airline.
After a crew member spotted a woman throwing coins from the airstairs at around 7:50 am, security was notified. As a result, all 100 passengers on flight GS6681, which was set to depart for Chifeng city, were transferred to a replacement aircraft. This incident caused a two-hour delay before the plane could take off, as stated by Tianjin Airlines in a Tuesday announcement.
Staff were deployed to search for the change and six 1 jiao coins were located near the aircraft on the tarmac, an airline spokesperson told MailOnline.
The woman, identified by her surname Yang, later told police that she had thrown the coins to pray for a safe flight. The woman was detained by police and might face additional penalties from the airline authorities, according to the statement.
The engine of an aircraft would be severely damaged or even destroyed if a coin is sucked into it, according to a professor at Civil Aviation University of China cited by China Daily in a previous report. ‘The engine could tremble, lose speed and even stop in mid-air if a coin were sucked into its core,’ he said. ‘That would put all the passengers on board at great risk.’
Tianjin Airlines urged passengers to comply with civil aviation laws and regulations and avoid behavior that could prove detrimental to the safety of passengers.
Throwing coins into an aircraft engine for good luck and a safe flight is not a new occurrence. In fact, just two weeks prior, a 31-year-old man was captured on camera at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Hubei province, throwing three coins towards the plane engine from the jet bridge, hoping for good fortune.
The man, surnamed Xia, later told police that his mother-in-law insisted that he threw coins at the aircraft to pray for a safe flight since it was his child’s first time flying. He was detained for endangering passenger safety for 10 days.
Last month, two women in their mid-20s were removed from a Lucky Air flight after they each admitted to tossing a 1 yuan coin as they were boarding a plane at Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport in Shandong province.
In February, a 28-year-old man was detained for seven days after he admitted to throwing two 1 yuan coins at another Lucky Air passenger jet in Anqing, Anhui province, causing the flight to be cancelled.
A total of 162 passengers were affected and the incident caused the airline nearly 140,000 yuan (£16,000).
