The article at Sea Slugs spoils so heavily that I am not sure if I need to watch the episode early. Might as well wait for Crunchy. But still, choice screencaps! Also, among all the retelling I failed to understand if Mio's Striker failing was a defeciency in her magic or not.

UPDATE: Steven says: "Sakamoto's Striker is a prototype that hadn't even gone through flight testing when she took it on the plane. The problems were teething issues in the new model; they had nothing to do with Sakamoto's magic."