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Passengers ground Chinese flight by throwing ‘lucky’ coins at plane – yet again

SHANDONG (China) — Two young Chinese women have been detained on suspicion of tossing coins at a plane they were boarding for good luck, making this the fourth confirmed case in two years.

The Lucky Air flight was delayed for two hours.

The Lucky Air flight was delayed for two hours.

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SHANDONG (China) — Two young Chinese women have been detained on suspicion of tossing coins at a plane they were boarding for good luck, making this the fourth confirmed case in two years.

The Lucky Air flight, which was due to depart from an airport in Jinan in Shandong province on Sunday (March 10), was delayed for two hours after they threw the coins into the air while boarding, the carrier said in a statement on Monday.

The ritual is supposed to ensure a safe journey.

The plane, which was travelling to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, eventually took off soon after 10pm when the coins were found underneath the boarding steps.

“After a check by the captain, we excluded the possibility of the coins entering the engine since the gap between the plane and the boarding gate was narrow and far away from the engine,” the airline said.

“About an hour after boarding the aircraft, two policemen came and took away two women, who appeared to be in their twenties,” a fellow passenger told the PearVideo website.

This is the third time in two years a Lucky Air flight has been grounded for this reason.

Last month a flight from Anqing to Kunming was cancelled after a 28-year-old man tossed two coins near the port engine of the plane.

This followed the cancellation of the exact same flight in October 2017 after a 76-year-old woman did the same thing to wish for good luck.

Before that an 80-year-old woman made headlines around the world after she threw a handful of loose change

into the engine of a China Southern Airlines plane in Shanghai, causing a five-hour delay.

The two elderly women avoided prosecution, but the 28-year-old man is facing criminal charges following February’s incident.

It is not yet clear what will happen to the two women detained following the latest incident.

The latest case sparked an online buzz once again, with many expressing surprise that people in their twenties would apparently engage in such old-fashioned superstitions.

“Never thought a 20-something person could be so stupid. What a failure of our nine-year compulsory education!” one user commented on microblogging platform Weibo. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

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