- 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.
- In a video, a flight attendant tells confused passengers someone threw “three to five coins” into the engine.
How did they even have access to do this? The only time I’ve boarded a plane without a jetway in decades was at a smallish airport (Warsaw) that had scheduling issues and we had to get bused out to a “gate” that was just a parking spot out on the apron.
Lots of large airports still have gates without jet bridges. Especially those airports with heavy traffic and are space limited. They just bus pax to the aircraft outside.
I’ve gotten on planes at Toronto from the tarmac multiple times. It just depends.
Airports charge money to use the Skybridge. If you travel with cheap airlines then you’ll often go to gates without bridges. It’s actually amazing the things that airports charge for.
I know there are a lot of smaller airports which use a bus system
even bigger ones
Have you ever boarded a plane in China?
No but I looked up the flight, and the airport it used in Hainan (SYX) has a number of gates with jetways, which are generally preferred for use. It’s not a podunk airfield in rural China.
Thanks for the info. That’s crazy. They were smart enough to get a clean line to the engine, and so incredibly stupid they threw coins into it.
The seal team six of stupid
But they still probably use buses on occasion. Also, it’s not exactly hard for a passenger to step through the little doors to the stairs at the end of the jetway, chuck a coin, then continue boarding.
Those doors are alarmed (at least in the US).
They’re also frequently propped open worldwide to handle gate checked bags.
That’s… Most of the flights I’ve taken.
Really? Which airports do you usually use?
I don’t really have ones I regularly use, but in the past few years: CPH, CNX, BKK, DMK, PNH, TFS, INI, BEG, AGP, MAN.
In Lisbon to board some of the planes a bus that takes you to where the plane is and then you climb up some stairs.
In London Luton you walk from the building to the plane and climb some stairs to board.
In my experience, even in Europe it will happen in low cost airports (such as Luton) or those which have too much traffic for their actual boarding facilities (the one in Lisbon which is almost in the center of the city and has by now been planned to be replaced for 4 decades, all the while tourist number have exploded to something like 10 million per year, so even with the expansion that was possible to do, there are simply not enough jetways for all flights).
Also in general little provincial, small city, “airports” (I used quotes because some amount to little more than airfields) almost never have jetways though at times are served by passenger jet planes (typically the kind of mid-size ones made by the likes of Embraer).
Did you throw a coin in the engine at Warsaw?!?!? I think you’ve had good luck. It’s not uncommon, probably because there are a lot of smallish airports with chronic scheduling issues. It’s even more common to disembark that way, though the “good luck prayer” excuse holds even less weight in that scenario, LOL.
No, but those were prop aircraft, Dash 8s I think. The intake is a much smaller target.
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