Bees delayed an American Airlines flight out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport this week after a swarm was discovered under a plane's wing.
A queen bee reportedly flew into a passenger jet's wing Wednesday as the aircraft was waiting to depart DFW for Germany, and she was followed by 1
,000 of her worker bees, NBC reported. The swarm delayed the flight for more than an hour as bee specialists in protective suits were called in.
"We had an issue at DFW with a swarm of bees yesterday afternoon, not once, but twice," American Airlines spokeswoman
Andrea Huguely told the Dallas Morning News on Thursday. "We called a bee keeper out to deal with the situation. He captured the queen and the swarm and we finished unloading."
But when the beekeeper left, the bees mounted a return attack and swarmed the same plane, forcing American Airlines to make a second call to get rid of the determined insects.
The flight ended up departing just before 5 p.m. Wednesday. Huguely told the Morning News that, while she could not confirm the number of bees, they never entered the cabin and were contained in the cargo area underneath the plane.
Karin McCay, a reporter at KCBD-TV, was on board the airplane while it was delayed at DFW and posted Twitter messages about the waiting flight.
The incident is not the first time insects bugged a flight.
The Tampa Bay Times reported in June that a wasp crawled into the aircraft sensor of an Allegiant Air flight that had just left St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. The plane was forced to divert to Orlando Sanford International Airport shortly.
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