What's that up there, it's a bird, it's a plane, no it's plane icicles ahhh...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8141195.stmIt is the stuff of a spoof news report - an injury sustained from ice hurtling to earth after breaking off a plane.
Bristol pensioner David Gammon is badly bruised after a grapefruit-sized ice block fell from the sky and into his lap. He was in his garden, under the flight path of Bristol International airport.
The airport has found no proof the ice came from any of its planes, and its air traffic controllers calculate it could have fallen from another plane flying within a five mile radius.
In such incidents, the ice typically forms from water leaking from the ventilation system, says Richard Taylor, of the Civil Aviation Authority. Unlike in The Day Today sketch where a woman is lanced by a falling urine icicle, toilet waste is rarely to blame.
"The misconception is that a toilet has been flushed and the remnants, when falling to earth, have frozen," says Mr Taylor. Hence the name "blue ice", so called for the chemicals added to plane toilets to mask odour and break down solids.
