Chris Martin surprised onlookers on Monday by kissing the tarmac at Sydney Airport before boarding a private jet to Auckland, New Zealand.
Just before stepping onto the plane, the Coldplay frontman dropped to his hands and knees to press his lips to the ground. This isn’t the first time he’s been seen performing this unusual gesture; he did the same last year upon landing in Malaysia before a concert and during a previous tour in Indonesia.
While Martin hasn’t publicly explained the ritual, it may be linked to a harrowing experience from early in his career. In 2005, he nearly lost his life when a plane he was on encountered a severe dust storm over West Africa.
At the time, Martin was traveling to Ghana with Oxfam, but as they approached Tamale Airport, the plane was caught in a sudden, blinding cloud of Saharan dust. “It was terrifying—the plane was all over the place,” he recalled to *The Sun*. “You couldn’t see a thing, and it turned out neither could the pilot.”
Martin, who was married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow then, said he was thinking of his young daughter Apple, now 20, during the ordeal. “I thought, ‘My daughter will need a stepdad,’” he said, remembering that moment vividly.
