Chinese Teenager Caught Stealing Two Planes for a Joyride Has Now Been Offered Flying Lessons

While some impressionable adolescents find joy in living life like it’s a video game, a teenage boy in China has literally taken things to the next level. This 13-year-old snuck into an airport in the city of Huzhou, in the Zhejiang province of eastern China, and stole two seaplanes to take them for a joyride just after midnight on June 15.

He first picked up one of the planes made by a company called SeaRey and started the engine, but ended up crashing it into the car park railing while trying to make a turn. Undeterred even by this defeat, he went on to break into another plane and this time around, managed to successfully taxi it around before leaving the airport on his electric bike. The boy escaped unharmed and his parents only found out about his little midnight madness after authorities showed up at his house.

Now footage of these moves has gone viral on Chinese social media platform Weibo and the boy has managed to rack up a bill of 8,000 yuan for the damage he caused to the planes. Authorities have also imposed a fine of 2,000 yuan and given him a strict warning. But pilots are so impressed by the boy’s skills, that he says he picked up from observing maintenance and repair work on these planes just a day before, that they have now offered to give him flying lessons and train him as a proper pilot. “We pilots all admired him,” the SeaRey base director told South China Morning Post.

So even as some people feel that this is an example of bad airport security and worse parenting abilities, it looks like some clouds do have a silver lining.

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