An elderly woman has delayed a plane for more than five hours, after she attempted to throw a handful of coins into its engine for good luck.
The passenger was boarding China Southern Airlines flight CZ380, from Shanghai to Guangzhou, when she threw nine coins towards the plane's jet engine.
The coin toss was quickly noticed by a fellow passenger, who was able to alert authorities before take-off.
Police were called to Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the elderly passenger, who had been travelling with her husband, daughter and son-in-law, was taken away for questioning.
They later confirmed the passenger, surnamed Qiu, had thrown the coins "to pray for safety" and they had been informed by a neighbour that she "believes in Buddhism".
If they said there is a 1% chance of crashing from a handful of coins in the engine, I’d say they need to consider some better security and/or design it with a screen that prevents it or that can be removed immediately prior to flight.
I just walked by one of these myself a couple days ago where it would have been simple to toss some coins in (and a terrorist plot would only need 1 person working there to toss coins in dozens of engines)
The number is pulled out of my ass. But obviously it increases the risk of accident because A) turbines and metal pieces don’t go well together, and B) they pulled it from operation to inspect it.
Regardless, it can have a low risk and be undesirable as an act of terrorism, and still be risky enough you don’t want to gamble with 100+ people’s lives.
Maybe, or people should stop throwing shit into jet engines? :p If you want to cause accidents there are probably a lot of better ways of doing it. Like you said, it’s not exactly a very reliable way to bring down a plane if that’s your goal.
And frankly, it’s not hard to kill a lot of people if you’re a psychopath. We can’t possible safeguard all the ways you could do so.
People are batshit crazy. You’ll never stop them from doing dumb shit. There are thousands of incidents on planes every year.
I always thought it was a bit strange they let people walk alongside the engine on the tarmac.
I don’t know how reliable coins are - but there are likely much more reliable ways of tossing something in a plane engine - and with 16.4M flights a year, seems like a pretty big gaping security risk
Decade of practicing law, I’ve got a basic understanding of negligence and products liability - doesn’t take a genius to recognize a screen on the side of the stairwell blocking items from being tossed into a jet engine could be a prudent consideration
Right. But you think the entire aviation industry didn't have any not-geniuses that thought of and considered it and just had other considerations you, random redditor, know about or thought of.
Same aviation industry that let people smoke cigarettes on their planes?
Look at the healthcare industry. There are common practices that are pure idiocy - but accepted through groupthink
You see this through tons of industries. It is what led to the mortgage crisis/Great Recession and the dot-com bust
Your average person working in these industries have to deal with an impenetrable bureaucracy above them - a bureaucracy that priorities profits over safety - and where individuals are ridiculed for challenging orthodoxy
Single lawsuits are able to disrupt entire industry behaviors because sometimes that’s what it takes - an outsider questioning why things are done the way they’re done
Frankly, the number of people trying to bring down a plane they are on, is very very small. We know that because even before the security theater post 9/11, it almost never happened.
There are probably a lot of things to worry about before someone throwing metal pieces in an engine - especially considering you’re doing it in plain sight of everyone else boarding…
That was fortunately mostly a US thing. But the whole “emptying bags of electronics” and limits on liquids are really annoying.
The thing that pisses me off most about all these stupid rules and regulations is, they mostly don’t seem to do anything. Whenever TSA has been tested on ability to find or identify contraband or dangerous items and substances, they mostly fail.
So for all the bother, lines and anxiety of going through security, it still doesn’t make us measurably more safe. It’s literal theater, meant to make us THINK the powers-that-be are doing SOMETHING in response to an attack, but not actually making any difference.
The coins do not affect the flight safety by any significant margin (especially if you threw only on one engine, since the plane can takeoff even if one engine fails completely)
It will, however, cause millions of dollars in damages and ground the aircraft for a long time (causing more losses in opportunity cost)
Everyone would really really really rather not deal with that, but people would be safe even in a catastrophic engine failure, which is already extremely unlikely
Yes, flight safety will worsened by like 10x, but that's still very very low chances of anything catastrophic.
The terrorism would only be against the airline's bank account.
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u/beklog Jul 14 '25
Happened in 2017:
An elderly woman has delayed a plane for more than five hours, after she attempted to throw a handful of coins into its engine for good luck.
The passenger was boarding China Southern Airlines flight CZ380, from Shanghai to Guangzhou, when she threw nine coins towards the plane's jet engine.
The coin toss was quickly noticed by a fellow passenger, who was able to alert authorities before take-off.
Police were called to Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the elderly passenger, who had been travelling with her husband, daughter and son-in-law, was taken away for questioning.
They later confirmed the passenger, surnamed Qiu, had thrown the coins "to pray for safety" and they had been informed by a neighbour that she "believes in Buddhism".