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Social Media’s ‘Bottle Cap Challenge’ a Dangerous Game

CFI tries to figure out the allure of intentionally adding FOD to a runway for the purpose of hitting it.

The Bottle Cap Challenge has seen a lot of activity on social media. [YouTube Screengrab: Patagonia Bush Pilots]
Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • A new "Bottle Cap Challenge" has emerged on social media, involving pilots using airplane tires to knock caps off soda bottles placed on the runway during takeoff.
  • The author condemns this challenge, highlighting the significant danger of intentionally hitting Foreign Object Debris (FOD) with an aircraft, which risks damage to the plane and potential injury.
  • The article criticizes the challenge for offering no practical aviation skill development, contrasting it with legitimate training exercises like STOL practice or power-off approaches.
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One of the outgrowths of video-enhanced social media are the number of “challenges” that are shared on them. For the unfamiliar, these challenges often involve a physical activity, like having a bucket of ice dumped over your head, having six of your closest friends hit golf balls at you, riding a skateboard down a flight of stairs at a public library, etc. The non-social media general public often hears about these challenges when the person performing the challenge is injured or worse.

For example, a few years ago, health officials were warning consumers not to eat detergent pods when the Tide Pod Challenge became a thing—the challenge involved people who ate the whole bowl of stupid on a given day and were inspired to swallow a packet of poisonous detergent as a means of gaining attention on social media.

Meg Godlewski

Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.

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