Airline pilot uses butter to force dodgy aircraft door shut

PA

An airline pilot who couldn't close his aircraft door ended up rubbing butter on the latch to force it shut, according to Croatian media reports.

Aviation news site Ex-Yu reports that passengers on the Croatia Airlines flight from Zagreb watched as the pilot and cabin crew smeared butter over the latch of the forward door, after it failed to close properly.

The plane then took off to Istanbul, where technicians reportedly fixed the problem.

A report in Balkans.com Business News says that the captain wrote an email to the airline's tech department saying: "I suggest you add additional butter on all of our flights in case we are forced to use it again to fix the door."

"Since we had problems closing the door, after a few minutes we thought of using olive oil, but realised it was too expensive and went for the butter instead.

"After the door was buttered it all went smoothly from there on so I would suggest stocking up on more butter on our flights."

Croatia Airlines was not available comment on the incident, but an internal investigation is believed to be taking place. However, it insists the safety of passengers was never at risk.

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