- China Southern Airlines warned passengers on social media not to throw coins at planes.
- A Wednesday flight was delayed four hours after such an incident.
A major Chinese airline has warned passengers not to throw coins into its planes' engines after an incident last week.
China Southern Airlines posted a five-minute video on Weibo explaining how actions like "throwing coins at the plane" can delay flights and threaten safety.
"If they pose a threat to aviation safety, they will also face varying degrees of penalties," it said in a post on the social network.
On Wednesday, March 6, the airline's domestic flight from the southern region of Hainan to the capital, Beijing, was delayed by four hours, data from Flightradar24 shows.
According to the Liberty Times, a video posted online shows a flight attendant saying that a passenger threw "three to five coins" into the Airbus A350's engine.
Visuals of a confused cabin from a parked China Southern Airlines aircraft operating flight CZ8805 from Sanya (ZJSY) to Beijing (ZBAA) Daxing because a passenger took the opportunity to throw six coins into the engine on March 6, 2024.
— FL360aero (@fl360aero) March 10, 2024
亡者农药#aircraft #travel pic.twitter.com/Vuj6sPh33N
"The aircraft maintenance staff conducted a comprehensive safety inspection and determined that there were no safety issues before takeoff," the airline's customer service told state media, per CNN.
This isn't the first time a passenger has thrown coins into a plane's engine.
CNN reported that it happened on another Chinese Southern Airlines flight in 2017, when an elderly passenger said it was "a prayer for a safe flight."
In 2019, Chinese airline Lucky Air sued a passenger for $21,000 for throwing two coins into a plane's engine, which he said was for good luck, per Simple Flying.