A mouse upset the best-laid plans of an airline and nearly 250 passengers in the Philippines, grounding a plane for 13 hours while engineers tried to smoke out the rodent.
The plane was preparing for take-off from Manila airport earlier this week when a crew member spotted the mouse scampering across an aisle in the economy class section, the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted airport officials as saying.
The captain ordered the passengers to disembark while maintenance staff fumigated the aircraft and laid traps, but the mouse was nowhere to be found.
The Doha-bound aircraft eventually took off 13 hours late, presumably with the mouse still on board, dead or alive.
“There was an incident before with a cockroach, but it’s the first time that we had to deal with a mouse,” the Inquirer quoted airport operations chief Octavio Lina as saying.
If they succeeded in killing the mouse, I’ll bet they’ll find it in a few days — or weeks.
This seems a bit asinine, to be sure. But as a private pilot in training, I can understand why such a little thing can wreak such havoc. Maintenance people and pilots alike are very obsessed with every little detail, as it really does not take much to bring such a big plane to the ground. Keep in mind that in a plane at 30,000 feet, you can’t just pull over if something goes wrong!
At least they didn’t ask these Indian rat catcher to catch them, that will take years….
Canalli — I don’t believe you said that!
But, I’m glad you did.
Mike,
good comeback, best I’ve heard in a long time
Given that a mouse could potentially chew through wires and so forth, I’m thinking it wasn’t such a bad choice on their part. I suppose one could also worry about diseases or other species of mice coming across the ocean, but that likely happens anyway.
I was on a flight about 10 years ago that was grounded by a mouse! We sat on the tarmac for about and hour then the call was made to unload the plane. 8 hours later BA managed to find another plane to put us on since our 747 was taken out of service for rodent removal!
Certainly agree though that a mouse in a plane is not a good thing. Chew through a cable and it could cause a disaster.
Wow, I’m from the Philippines, and this is certainly embarrasing news. All the way to CNN! *shudder*
Their reactions were perfectly suited to the occasion; I just watched “Mouse Hunt” on the TV. He was just a little guy but he did a major trash job on that house. I’d park my 747, too.