Strange Day for Aviation – Covering Your Farts and Hitting a Horse

It was definitely a strange news day in the world of aviation today. Here are my two favorite news items.

• A flight from Washington/National to Dallas/Ft Worth made an emergency landing in Nashville after customers reported smelling matches onboard. Though you are legally allowed to bring a small number of matches on the plane, you can’t actually light them. Uh, ok. Anyway, the Washington Post article points out that it was all just a false alarm. Apparently, a woman who has a “medical condition” which apparently causes her to drop some nasty gas bombs lit the matches to hide the smell.
• As if that one isn’t good enough, how about this for an accident. The Aviation Safety Network reports that a Saab 2000 turboprop operated by Carpatair struck a horse upon takeoff from Bacau airport in Romania. Yeah, that’s right. It hit a HORSE! The damage to the plane was light and that plane made it to its destination ok, but I’d hate to see what happened to the horse.