Co-pilot's coffee spill blamed for Serbian president's plane engine failure, subsequent one-mile free fall

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic was flying from Belgrade to Rome to meet with Pope Francis, an appointment that he probably wrote on his calendar in giant block letters. But an hour after taking off from the airport, the 34-year-old Dassault Falcon 50 carrying Nikolic and nine other passengers had a terrifying engine malfunction. For one horrifying minute, the plane plummeted more than a mile toward the dark water of the Adriatic Sea before the pilot could regain control.

With only two of the Falcon's three engines functioning, the plane returned to the airport. The meeting with the pope was canceled and Nikolic's shaken – physically and psychologically – advisors told various news outlets that they felt lucky to be alive. Stanislava Pak told Reuters:

"I'll never step foot on that plane again,"

But the co-pilot might not be on that plane ever again either. That near-tragedy was all caused because Bojan "Butterfingers" Zoric spilled his coffee all over the instrument panel and pushed several buttons while he tried to clean up the mess. Serbia's Civil Aviation Authority released an incident report which said:

Co-pilot Bojan Zoric accidentally knocked over coffee onto the instrument panel and, in trying to mop up the coffee, activated the emergency slot extension which caused the plane to lose altitude.

Zoric admitted his mistake to the aviation board, confessing that he "accidentally activated the 'emergency slat' button" which turned off the plane's autopilot and caused it to lose more than 5,000 feet of altitude. Zoric's license has reportedly been suspended, which means he has plenty of free time to buy a couple of spill-proof to-go cups.