Spilled coffee in 777 cockpit leads to inadvertent hijack warning, FAA-mandated sippy cups look likely

If you’ve ever spilled coffee on a piece of electronics, maybe a keyboard or even a laptop , spare a thought for the pilot of United Airlines flight 940, outbound from Chicago and heading to Frankfurt. Not long after takeoff the pilot apparently dumped a cup of Joe onto the communications panel in the cockpit and things rapidly went downhill from there. The crew inadvertently sent a code 7500, which indicates that the plane is being hijacked and, as you can imagine, that led to a lot of unwanted attention. It’s not clear whether the equipment malfunctioned and sent the code or the pilot, likely struggling with a scalded lap, fat-fingered things on the panel. Either way, the flight diverted to Toronto and, rather tragically, the passengers were all sent back to Chicago to try again the next day. Spilled coffee in 777 cockpit leads to inadvertent hijack warning, FAA-mandated sippy cups look likely originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 10:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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