TALES OF THE CITY
AVIATION ACCOUNTABILITY Plane Engine Coin Tosser Fined RMB120,000 By Matthew Bossons
R
emember that idiot that threw coins at a jet engine in Anhui province last year for good luck? Yah, so do we – him and the hundreds of the other bozos (a slight exaggeration) that decided that tossing a piece of metal into a highly complex machine that transports people through the air is a good idea. Anyway, we’ll get to the point: A 28-year-old man identified in legal documents by the alias ‘Liu Qiang’ has been fined a whopping RMB120,000 for tossing coins at an airplane’s jet engine at Anqing Tianzhushan Airport. The incident occurred on February 17, 2019, when Liu (whose actual surname is Lu) threw two RMB1 coins at the engine of flight 8L9960 to Kunming for good luck. Prior to takeoff, the flight crew noticed a coin on the ground and asked if anyone
had thrown coins into the plane’s engine, to which Liu answered that he had tossed two coins. The flight was then delayed while maintenance personnel hunted for the currency. One of the coins was then found in the plane’s left engine. While the flight was originally scheduled to leave Anqing at 3.05pm, the plane was not able to leave the airport until 7.30am the following morning. The whole episode was presumably super annoying for passengers, who had to spend the night in Anqing, and very expensive for the airline, Lucky Air (or, as we’ve dubbed it, Unlucky Air). In the immediate aftermath of Liu’s misguided attempt to attain good luck, or bless the flight, or whatever it was he thought he was doing, he was detained by police for 10 days. Lucky Air also announced that it would take legal action against Liu, seeking damag-
es estimated to be around RMB140,000. The airline’s quest for compensation reached its climax last month, when a court in Anhui province issued Liu a fine of RMB120,000 for his coin-throwing antics. Liu pled guilty in the case, but did take the time to blame the airport for not informing him of the fact that passengers are not allowed to throw items into the plane’s engines (errr – okay, Liu). The defendant also noted that flight 8L9960 was to be his first time traveling by air, and that he was ignorant of how aircraft operate. As noted at the start of this piece, Liu is far from the first superstitious traveler to toss a coin at – or into – an airplane engine; there were at least 10 instances of people throwing coins at jet engines in the first half of 2019 alone.
WWW.THATSMAGS.COM | FEBRUARY 2020 | GZ | 9
