An Iberia pilot suffered a suspected spider bite mid-flight, after the arachnid was thought to have crawled onto the plane, causing delays while the plane had to be fumigated.
The spider is thought to have scurried onto the plane during a stopover in Casablanca, Morocco earlier in the week before it continued on to Spain, local publication La Vos de Galicia reported.
A part of the plane crew claimed that the critter was a tarantula, the outlet reported, although Iberia later said that it could not confirm if it was a spider or another bug.
The Iberia Airbus A320 was flying between Dusseldorf in Germany and Madrid’s Barajas Airport on the afternoon of Friday 21 February, when the pilot was apparently bitten.
Once the plane reached the Spanish capital, the plane had to be fumigated, leading to a three-hour delay in operations.
The captain suffered was treated with Methylprednisolone, commonly used to treat swelling, redness, itching, and allergic reactions, as a preventative measure and did not have any reaction.
Iberia Airlines told The Independent that the pilot is doing fine and carried on with the scheduled flights.
After leaving Casablanca on Tuesday 18 February, the spider would have visited European cities including Brussels, Zurich and Toulouse before reaching Madrid and Dusseldorf, reports said.
The incident only became known once the plane had reached Madrid, causing an onward flight to Vigo to be delayed, reaching its destination three hours later than planned.
Iberia confirmed that the plane was thoroughly disinfected at Madrid, and said that it carried out the rest of its flight schedule without issue.
Other spiders have caused aviation chaos in the past. In one incident last year at Istanbul Airport Turkish police arrested a man suspected of trying to smuggle hundreds of poisonous spiders and scorpions out of the country.
Police seized dozens of bags containing some 1,500 scorpions and spiders, including tarantulas.
Critters have also left passengers in shock mid-flight, such as when a set of paws and a silhouette of a snout appeared in the light fixtures on a flight to Los Angeles in October.
More recently in November, a TAP Air Portugal plane was grounded for four days after 132 hamsters escaped and ran riot inside a luggage hold.
When airport staff at Ponta Delgada Airport started to unload the pet transport boxes from the plane, they realised that the ones meant to contain the hamsters were damaged and empty.
The TAP Air Portugal plane reportedly had to be grounded for safety reasons while staff got to work to try to find all 132 hamsters.
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 the fourth day.
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