Coffee spill on United flight just one of many terrifying/hilarious incidents in Toronto airspace. Here are five more

The Toronto Star is reporting that a Chicago-Frankfurt flight made an emergency landing at Pearson after the plane’s communications equipment malfunctioned and put the plane out of touch with ground control. The culprit was the pilot, who spilled coffee on the radio. (Film students and almost nobody else will remember a movie about this kind of thing.) Like all incidents of this nature, this one was logged by the Web site the Aviation Herald and has been reported on all over North America. Imagine our joy when we discovered that the site was searchable by city. A quick search for “Toronto” taught us just how common these kinds of incidents are, and how bizarre some of them get. Here, a small survey.

• A plane turned back to Pearson after smoke started pouring from the back galley.  The culprit? A dirty oven.
• A Porter flight diverted from the island airport and flew to Pearson after the crew got a warning light about the nose gear not coming down properly.
• A Toronto-Manchester flight was given an “open door” warning and turned around before crossing the Atlantic (probably a good idea).
• A Westjet flight had to screech to a halt after another plane got too close to its takeoff runway.
• A flight that was en route to Toronto had to land short because the flight crew shut off a windshield heater. In the cold at altitude, the windshield shattered. This one comes with less-exciting-than-it-sounds video.

Flying is still that safest way to travel, so the only real lesson we’re drawing from our brief glance here is that, a) these kinds of things appear to be common, since there are so many flights out of Pearson any given day, and b) we should clean our oven more often.

• Spilled coffee may have prompted emergency landing at Pearson [Toronto Star]
• Results for “Toronto” [The Aviation Herald]