Most people can recall their first flight. But for four civil servants from Anhui province, the memory isn’t likely to be a positive one. According to the Strait Herald the four were arrested earlier this month for stealing the lifejackets beneath their airline seats. But when the women were later detained at Xiamen’s airport, they said they had no idea it was illegal to remove the buoyancy aids. In fact, they planned to use the lifejackets for a spot of swimming.
Airport police say it’s not the first time that this has happened in Xiamen – last year saw three other cases of lifejacket-lifting. “We’ve concluded that some people like to take something from the plane as a souvenir of their first flight,” one officer theorised.
Then again, passengers on future flights won’t want to discover, at the worst possible moment, that they don’t have a lifejacket under their seat. The police say the women’s conduct constituted a ‘theft of aviation facilities’ and they could be detained for 15 days as punishment.
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