Over the last few weeks, there have been several incidents that caused some to think of the 2006 "Snakes on a Plane" thriller but with other animals.
At the start of October, a Vietjet flight from Bangkok to Taipei descended into chaos after a passenger went to the bathroom and came across a rodent with "red eyes" near the toilet. After flight attendants searched the plane, they found a box with otters, a marmoset and 28 star tortoises that then got out and started crawling through the plane.
Related: Planning a trip to Paris? French hotels are struggling to control a disgusting problem
A flight between two Mexican cities on Oct. 6 experienced a different type of swarm when a cloud of mosquitoes got into the cabin and started buzzing through it as the passengers sat waiting for the flight to depart.
Ayer tomé un vuelo de @flyvolaris @viajaVolaris y estaba el avión repleto de mosquitos... la respuesta de la aerolínea fue “es una situación ajena a la aerolínea debido a la cantidad de agua estancada en los alrededores, la población de mosquitos es grande”. 🤦🏽♂️ pic.twitter.com/BFZ4ZZaba9
— Juan Manuel Jiménez (@juanmapregunta) June 24, 2019
'The plane was full of mosquitoes...'
"Yesterday I took [a flight] and the plane was full of mosquitoes," journalist Juan Manuel Jiménez wrote in Spanish on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, of his experience. "The airline's response was 'it is a situation beyond the control of the airline due to the amount of stagnant water in the surroundings, the mosquito population is large.'"
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Flight VOI221 was scheduled to leave from Guadalajara to Mexico City at 4:29 local time with the low-cost airline Volaris but, according to flight tacking information, departed and arrived more than two hours later than scheduled.
A separate video of the flight shot by passenger Elizabeth Esmeralda Minjarez Corona shows a flight attendant moving through the cabin while spraying some sort of bug repellant with abandon as other travelers clap and yell "bravo." Others are heard screaming as the flight attendant moves closer.
Known formally as Concesionaria Vuela Compañía de Aviación (VLRS) -), Volaris is a budget airline running flights within Mexico as well as between the country and some U.S. destinations.
Travelers in many places have been dealing with insect infestations
While local media in Guadalajara said that the airport is at risk of a "proliferation of mosquitoes" due to its location "near areas with flooding and abundant vegetation," Volaris is yet to release an official statement on what went wrong with the flight.
As seen with an ongoing infestation in Paris, Mexico is far from the only place in the world to be gripped with an insect problem. As local bed bugs started to grow increasingly resistant to insecticides, hordes of the insects have been spreading rapidly throughout the city.
After videos of bed bugs everywhere from hotels to the metro and Charles de Gaulle Airport started to emerge on social media and prompt both local and visitor complaints, Paris Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire called for the need for an "urgent action plan [...] against this scourge as France is preparing to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024."
Many visitors to the city have been complaining of finding bed bugs on plane and public transit seats while one local threw out all her furniture and has been off work since February to deal with an infestation inside her home.
"It's an endless nightmare, I have no life left," a Paris resident named Émilie told French broadcast station BFMTV.
