New method for insuring airline safety

This sort of thing also happens in Bangladesh, apparently, where animals are sacrificed and daubed over the new manufacturing plant to make sure that it works properly. Yuk!

The Peruvians do something similar to bless their homes.

Boats and ships are ceremonially blessed upon launch by smashing a bottle containing an alcoholic beverage over them, world-wide, likewise if they are renamed. Folklore would dictate that the operation has to be carried out by a woman of high repute (finding one these days is getting more and more difficult.....), otherwise the vessel will suffer ill-fortune and doom will follow.

Scusi, but I don't see where it said that this was required by the Insurers.

Sorry, coldn't resist.

It'll be in the small - smaaallll print. The same as in the maintenance manual...

Can you suggest what size mammal should be sacrificed to cure conducted interferrence problems in a control board...maybe a small D*g ? (I just can't bring myself to write the whole word)

They at least through them in the engine to fix it right?

Other cultures can seem strange alright, but how often have you seen educated westerners asking various deities to alter the world for their own purposes. It's called "praying" and it still happens even today. Some people even help the "praying" by sending money to preachers who run television programs. Apparently, there is a fairly high turnover among these entertainers when they get caught for various indiscretions. Jeff

Nice one.... Catholics take note at next communion.....blood wine...euchhh.

Coincidentally I saw a programme on TV last night about the rise of Protestantism and Martin Luther. I didn't realise his main gripe with the Papacy was their greed and inability to resist indulgencies (of the carnal variety as much as anything apparently). Sounds like the nothing had changed since the split with what is now known as the Orthodox church hundreds of years earlier.

Needn't expect much change soon then, but it's interesting that awareness of our 'rights' and hunger for litigation does appear to be having an effect in some quarters.

There are places in the Philippines where this is also practiced (though I've never heard it being done at the airport!).

At one factory a couple of decades ago, we had just commissioned an open hearth furnace. These things used huge electrodes to melt ores (I enjoyed telling my friends and relatives that they were melting rocks at the factory). On the day of the inauguration, they invited the mayor, the mayor's wife, their bodyguards, and a few of the city counselors. The mayor's wife was given the honor of pressing the start button.

To make the furnace flare up faster, someone suggested adding 20 liters of premium gasoline into the pit. As soon as the start button was pressed, the electrodes sparked and WHAM! I was told the explosion was heard at the next factory which was about 2 miles away. Since it was an open pit, the damage was not too extensive.

The operators started discussing and claimed that the reason for the explosion was that the gods had not been appeased. They took a white goat and a white rooster, killed them and sprinkled their blood on the premises and even on the control boards which I had so painstakingly designed and wired.

Two days later, they were up and running.