7,000 gold-digging Chinese women apply for a matchmaking cruise

by Annie Scott on

The JiaYuan matchmaking service in China is hosting a modern-day Cinderella ball. And friends, it’s a juicy one.

Basically, they’re taking applications to fill 80 spaces: 40 men and 40 women. The men must be worth over $7 million, and the women, well … “they will be stringently screened for their looks, physique and intellect, with marriage counselors on hand to judge whether they are ‘kind, gentle and tasteful,'” organizer Cheng Yongsheng told the Xinhua news agency, according to Reuters.

Apparently, after last year’s event (which includes a banquet, a ball, a five-star hotel and a cruise, all over the course of just two days), ten couples began dating and one couple has even gotten married. It’s like a reality show without the cameras.

Over 7,000 women in China have reportedly applied. Seven thousand! If you’re “kind, gentle and tasteful,” maybe you should, too. But you’re going to have to speak Chinese to navigate the website, and you’re also going to have to admit to yourself that you’re a gold-digger.

%Poll-36987%
If you’re into this, you should also check out Mike Barish’s article on Air New Zealand’s matchmaking flight.
%Gallery-71848%

%Gallery-10616%

Plane hits pig on runway and passengers panic

by Jamie Rhein on

It wasn’t a wolf’s huffing and puffing that led to the demise of a pig on the runway at the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe last Tuesday. Nope, it was a MA60 60-seater attempting to take off. The wild bush pig may or may not have seen the Air Zimbabwe plane coming. But, come it did.

Poor pig. Poor plane. Poor passengers–and poor flight attendant who had to yell, “‘Evacuate!'” after the damaged plane ended up off the runway with dust and smoke filling the cabin.

That’s not the worst of it.

When the panicked passengers and crew tried to escape using the plane’s emergency exit doors, they couldn’t go out one of them. It was jammed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, once they managed to wrestle the plane’s main door open with a mighty effort, two passengers were hurt when they fell into a ditch as they scrambled away from the plane. Because this mishap happened at night, the ditch wasn’t easily visible in the dark.

There’s more. The emergency rescue team didn’t show up for five minutes after the crash because the secret police beat them to the plane. Instead of offering assistance, the police’s main concern was arresting two passengers who were taking pictures.

That’s not all. It took an hour for the 37 passengers to be given water and five hours for them to be allowed to leave the airport. Friends and relatives, who came to the airport after finding out about the accident via cell phone calls from people on the plane, were not told any details about what had happened or given access to the passengers.

Along with reading like a bizarre slapstick story, this pig-on-the-runway-makes-mayhem tale is a good reminder that no matter how bad a flight might seem, it could be worse. [The Times]

Man accidently ejects himself from plane

by Jamie Rhein on

This is a what NOT to do story if you’re ever in a Pilatus PC-7 Mk II. Do not, I repeat, do not, use the black and yellow handle located between your legs to steady yourself. Not even if you’re pretending to be Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun. Pull on that handle and you’ll find yourself out of the plane before you can say, “Ooops, I shouldn’t have done that.”

That handle is what the pilots and passengers can use to activate the ejector seat in order to shoot out from the plane in case of an emergency.

In the case of this recent mishap, the passenger was on a joy ride with an expert pilot of South Africa’s Silver Falcons air display team when he pulled the lever during one of the maneuvers.

And whoosh!, there he went–the two rockets attached to the back of his chair catapulting him right out of the plane 100m up into the wide open sky.

Luckily, the ejector seat is designed to release a parachute so the man safely floated back to solid ground near the Langebaanweg airfield not far from Cape Town, South Africa.

If one could be assured that you’d land as safely as this guy did, you have to admit this does sound like it would be a blast in more ways than one.

I wonder if pilots will now post a sign in front of the passenger seat saying, “DO NOT pull the yellow and black lever. DON”T EVEN TOUCH IT. Ever.” [news.com.au]

*The Pilatus PC-7 in the photo is from the Royal Netherlands Air Force

Customs finds snakes and geckos strapped to passenger

by Sean McLachlan on

The fine folks at Travelocity did a poll a couple of months ago to find out the most annoying type of passenger to be seated next to on an airplane. People with poor hygiene and those who cough or sneeze came out on top, but there’s one category they missed–the guy with reptiles strapped to his body.

Customs officials in Norway have arrested a man who had 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos hidden under his clothing. He had rolled up the pythons in socks and put the geckos inside boxes, and then taped them to his chest and legs. The animals had a total value of about $10,000.

While that’s pretty high on the ick scale, the scariest thing is that officials didn’t become suspicious until they did a routine check of his luggage and found a tarantula, at which point they searched him. This amazing video shows him all geared up and ready to fly.

This story begs the question–how often do people get away with this? How often have you sat next to someone covered in creepy crawlies? And how would you know?

Enjoy your flight!

%Gallery-68288%

Northwest pilots fly plane miles past airport where plane was supposed to land

by Jamie Rhein on

Missing a highway exit, thus driving well past it and needing to turn around may be common, particularly if a driver is feeling spaced out and road hashed. Missing an airport, thus flying past it, is unusual. Even so, it happened this past Wednesday. A Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 overshot Minneapolis where it was heading.

Luckily, the plane only went 150 miles further before the pilots realized their mistake and turned around. I guess they must have missed the fact the landscape below had turned from rural to suburban to urban. Minneapolis does have impressive architecture and it’s not small. How do you not notice a city?

Overshooting Minneapolis wasn’t the pilots only mistake. They didn’t contact radio controllers for over an hour. Because of this, the Air National Guard was alerted to be on stand-by and airport police met the plane when it landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport. Police involvement is standard procedure when there is a communication failure.

As an explanation for the big whoops!, the pilots said they were distracted by a heated discussion they were having about airline policy. That must have been some discussion.

There is a possibility that the pilots may have been suffering from pilot fatigue which caused these errors. They could have been taking a snooze. Whether it was fatigue or a heated discussion, the pilots are suspended from flying during the investigation.

As for the 144 passengers, they didn’t know anything was amiss until the police showed up.

I can imagine those people who had scrambled to get their bags out of the overhead bin before the seat belt sign went off thinking when they saw the police board the plane, “Wow, I won’t do that again. I promise I’ll keep my seat belt fastened and wait for that last ding. I swear I will.” [Bloomberg.com]

*The photo is of an aerial shot of Minneapolis. Along with the tall buildings, it seems like the water could be a nifty visual cue to keep in mind when flying to Minneapolis.