The passenger threw several coins at a China Southern Airlines airliner’s engine, hoping it would ensure a safe flight. Ummm…
My (unoriginal) view is that for many people any sufficiently advanced technology isn’t distinguishable from magic, and that such people simply have no clue whatsoever how that technology works.
But I must say this incident stretches the boundaries of my view. Dim view that I may have of some people’s understanding, I would have been quite doubtful if anyone had suggested beforehand that there was anyone out there this ignorant.
Maybe she recognized it as being such advanced technology that surely it must have safeguards in place that would prevent a tiny object casually tossed toward it from rendering it inoperable or dangerous. This seems to have been the case since the flight resumed after a brief inspection of the undamaged engine.
An 80-year old Chinese woman … reminds me of the story artist Marina Ambramovic tells of her mother journeying from Serbia to see her daughter in New York. She said she didn’t mind flying but didn’t want a window seat as she’d be getting her hair done just before the flight.
It was delayed for five hours and they found one coin in the engine. Hardly a “brief” delay. And that coin could have caused all kinds of problems.
Said safeguards are preventing people from doing that and punishing them when they do.
…and what if the son hadn’t see her do it?
They rightfully leave nothing to chance when it comes to plane safety.
But those engines are tested by firing whole birds and simulated hail storms into them with a cannon while running at full power.
I’m not defending how stupid it is to throw something at them - in fact believing that throwing coins will bring good luck is kind of stupid in itself without any need to involve an airplane at all.
I’m arguing that the likely explanation for this error in good judgment isn’t that the backward ignorant woman Pinchester describes believed that it was “magic” and simply couldn’t understand the technology, but more likely she just didn’t think it would do any harm. And in this case, it didn’t.
You basically contradict yourself in my view.
I’m not saying that throwing the coins would do harm, for reasons you set out. However, it wouldn’t improve and might worsen the chances of engine failure.
However, presumably she threw the coins to improve her chances of avoiding an engine failure.
It is therefore inherent in her actions that she believes in magic - since a belief that throwing some coins somewhere will alter outcomes is a magical belief - and/or has no clue at all about what will and won’t worsen the chances of engine failure.
She cannot possibly have understood the technology, not have had had magical beliefs, and have done what she did.
Further, it is correct that “engines are tested by firing whole birds and simulated hail storms into them with a cannon while running at full power.” However to pass the test the “… engine does not have to remain functional… but it must not cause significant damage to the rest of the aircraft.”
So even if Grandma was knowledgeable enough to know that the engine would have been tested and found capable of taking in some coins without damaging the rest of the aircraft, that does not mean it might not have failed during takeoff, dooming the aircraft to crash due to lack of required power.
Maybe she thought “If something as trivial as tossing a coin into the engine would result in engine damage, I don’t want to fly in it. So I’ll toss a coin in to see if it holds up.” Pretty rational thinking. Like, “I’ll test this pry bar over my knee, to see if it is rigid enough to lift that rock.”
No because it wasn’t her plan to report what she did. If it didn’t hold up she was likely to be the victim. The first time she knew the engine failed her coin test may have been as the plane lost power and crashed.
Except, as the article states, that was not, in fact, her motive.
Edit: Not to mention, “testing” the engine in this manner makes no more sense than a passenger secretly drilling a hole in the side of the Titanic, thinking, “I want to see if this ship can withstand a leak. If it can’t, I don’t want to be aboard.”
Exactly. Has everyone already forgotten “The Miracle on the Hudson”? Yes, those engines “survived” ingesting birds. The flight was not as successful.
Just because the planes can fly on one engine doesn’t mean that that is the desired condition.
Actually, the magic worked.
During the five-hour inspection of the engine to find the coin(s), mechanics discovered a flaw that would certainly have caused the engine to fail catastrophically during the flight. So throwing the coins at the engine was good luck because it avoided an emergency situation!
I shouldn’t have to point it out, but I’m joking. 
It would not be unreasonable for a fairly knowledgeable layman to assume that if the coins were going to militate against the engine function, their effect would be noted before it took off, thus placing no passengers at risk of falling out of the sky.
However, it would be statistically improbable that the plane would fly through a coin storm, so verification that the plane is coin-proof may be a stretch.
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Maybe she lied to the assembled reporters (or their pool reporter) about her motives.
You joke, but I thought along your lines.
Since the engines had to be fully inspected, IF there was anything wrong, it would have been corrected as a result of the inspection. So, statistically, the engines are “safer” as a result of the unscheduled inspection, even though nothing was found to be amiss.
Coming soon to theaters everywhere: Three Coins In The Fan Blades.