A female passenger has been detained by police for tossing six coins at a plane's engine for good luck before take-off in south . 

CCTV footage of the bizarre incident on Saturday shows the 61-year-old woman throwing the coins from the jet bridge as she was boarding the China Southern Airlines flight in Nanning, Guangxi province.

The woman, who was a first-time flier, threw the coins to pray for a safe flight, the airline said in a statement. As a result of her superstitious actions, flight CZ8427 departing for Bangkok was delayed for 78 minutes.  

Staff were deployed to search for the change and all six coins were found near the aircraft, according to CCTV.

The woman, surnamed Chen, was detained for seven days, the report added. 

The airline urged passengers to refrain from being 'superstitious' on its official account on Chinese microblogging site Weibo.    

Abide by aviation safety regulations when taking planes and don't throw things,' the airline wrote. 

The engine of an aircraft would be severely damaged or even destroyed if a coin is sucked into it, according to a professor at Civil Aviation University of China cited by China Daily in a previous report.

'The engine could tremble, lose speed and even stop in mid-air if a coin were sucked into its core,' he said. 'That would put all the passengers on board at great risk.'

This incident marks the fifth such instance of a passenger in China tossing coins at a plane this year. 

Just last Tuesday, a 66-year-old woman was detained for 10 days for throwing six coins at a flight at Hohhot Baita International Airport in Inner Mongolia. 

All 100 passengers on the flight had to be assigned onto a replacement aircraft and the plane took off following a two-hour delay.

In early April, a 31-year-old man was caught on camera tossing three coins from the jet bridge towards the plane engine for good luck at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Hubei province.

The man, surnamed Xia, later told police that his mother-in-law insisted that he should throw coins at the aircraft to pray for a safe flight since it was his child's first time flying. He was detained for endangering passenger safety for 10 days.

Last month, two women in their mid-20s were removed from a Lucky Air flight after they each admitted to tossing a 1 yuan coin as they were boarding a plane at Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport in Shandong province.

In February, a 28-year-old man was detained for seven days after he admitted to throwing two 1 yuan coins at another Lucky Air passenger jet in Anqing, Anhui province, causing the flight to be cancelled.

A total of 162 passengers were affected and the incident caused the airline nearly 140,000 yuan (£16,000). 

MailOnline