Fellow passengers said on Weibo that the woman had thrown the coins at the plane's engine in order to "pray for a safe flight." She has now been placed under investigation by the airline. According to her neighbors, she is a Buddhist.
Airport workers then spent the next four hours fishing around the engine for the tiny pieces of metal. In the end, police found eight coins scattered around the engine and one coin actually inside the engine. In total, the spare change added up to 1.7 yuan.
While that small amount might not be able to buy you much good luck, the pilot said that the coins could have caused some serious damage to the plane's engine if they had not been discovered.
Originally scheduled to leave the Pudong airport at 12:40 p.m., the flight finally took off more than five hours later. However, the woman's prayers seemed to have at least done the trick with the plane landing in Guangzhou a few hours later without incident.
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