A nearly 15-mile-long 'drawing' of a penis appeared over Italian skies last week after a Lufthansa pilot was redirected from the Catania airport in Sicily due to high winds and a terminal closing. FlightRadar24, a flight tracking app, first noticed the “unusual” flight pattern.
Flight LH306, responsible for the drawing, first left Frankfurt at around 1:45 p.m. local time on Friday, and was scheduled to land in the Sicilian city about two hours later. Mid-flight, however, the commercial airline pilot was told to divert his flight to Malta.
The airport in Catania, Fontanarossa airport, has been experiencing reduced operations following a passenger terminal fire on July 16.
After being diverted from Catania, the pilot then reportedly took more than 16 minutes to complete the phallic drawing before turning back to the original flight path and eventually landing in Malta.
While Italian media has speculated the pilot drew the phallic shape out of frustration, Lufthansa officials are calling the pattern an accident.
It's worth noting that the practice of pilots drawing phallic shapes in the sky is nothing new. In 2022, a US Air Force pilot drew a penis-shaped flight pattern near a Russian base in Syria, which prompted American officials to review the "unintentional" incident.
In 2017, however, a more blatant act of buffoonery occurred when two Naval officers drew a large penis in the sky, reportedly saying that their prank would “be so funny” and “awesome.”