Pan-Am, the world-famous airline, set up an equally world-famous plan which would prove once and for all that their ground crew were stealing the tiny bottles of whisky from their aircraft. An ingenious plan was devised to validate their suspicions.
In the summer of 1978, cuckoo clocks were set up in the liquor cabinets of their planes and wired in such a way that the clocks would stop when the doors of the cabinets were opened. This simple little device, they claimed, would tell them whether the liquor cabinets were opened on the ground or in the air.
Unfortunately, they neglected to tell the flight crew...
When a stewardess, Miss Susan Becker, approached the liquor cabinets in preparation of serving in-flight drinks to the 80 passengers aboard the Boeing 727, she heard an ominous 'tick tick tick'. She immediately alerted the captain, who immediately declared an emergency to Berlin, who immediately allowed the pilot to make an emergency landing, after which the passengers immediately left the plane through the emergency exits.
In 1978, a miniature bottle of whisky cost the airline about 17 pence.
The cost of the emergency landing cost them £6,500.
