Officials grounded a plane in Portugal for four days earlier this month after an unlikely cargo came loose and threatened to cause havoc onboard the aircraft. The TAP Air Portugal plane was forced out of service after more than 130 hamsters being transported onboard broke free of their cages and escaped into the plane.
The plane flew from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, to Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island, which is part of the Portuguese Azores. When crews on the island began unloading the plane, they found that boxes that were supposed to be filled with 132 hamsters were open and empty, reports the Independent.
The animals, which were reportedly part of a delivery destined for a pet store on the island, could have caused havoc onboard the Airbus A321neo had they been left unchecked. Rodents like hamsters can work their way into intricate parts onboard planes, have a habit of chewing through wires and could cause chaos onboard should they scurry out while passengers were onboard.
As such, crews at TAP Air Portugal had no choice but to ground the plane until all 132 animals could be safely rounded up:
It took airport staff several days to spot and catch all the hamsters that were hiding and scurrying around the cargo hold, with the remaining 16 finally caught on Sunday.
Images posted by the Portuguese newspaper show a person pinching a hamster by the scruff of the neck in what appears to be the cabin, as well as another person in gloves holding a hamster. The images have not been independently verified by The Independent.
Once all hasters had been caught, the Airbus A321neo made the journey back to Lisbon on a “ferry flight”, meaning no passengers were on board, the publication reported.
A flight from Ponta Delgada, TP9260, landed in Lisbon, where TAP’s headquarters are located, on Sunday at 1.30pm after a two-hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean without fault, data from FlightRadar shows.
Now that the aircraft is back on the mainland, TAP reports that the plane will undergo thorough safety checks, adds CBS News. The evaluations will ensure that the hamsters didn’t cause any damage during their little adventure across the aircraft.
This is far from the first time that rodents have caused chaos onboard an aircraft. A live mouse was reportedly spotted in an onboard meal earlier this year and something horrific called a “super rat” was spied by disgusted passengers onboard a Spirit plane last month.