Russian Airline Passengers Panic Over ‘Hole In Wing’

Frickin' passengers! It's just a 'technical element':

What looked like a large hole in the wing did not stop a Russian airline jet from taking off for Siberia with dozens of panicked passengers on board.

The Boeing 737 jet was delayed on the tarmac of a Moscow airport when one of the passengers looked out of a window and noticed an oval-shaped gap on the left wing above one of the engines.

...The plane eventually landed more than three hours behind schedule in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

...Tyurkin said all that was missing from the wing was the cover to a hatch workers use to check the left engine. It was not immediately clear who had misplaced the hefty piece of equipment or why.

“This was a technical element. Its absence doesn’t prevent takeoff,” said Tyurkin. “It does not affect safety.”