Angry bees on the cockpit window ... and other times they delayed flights
- Because of their tendency to travel across open spaces, bees often end up pausing at planes, terminals or other man-made spots in lieu of more natural areas
An Air India flight this weekend was already delayed for technical reasons. Then the bees showed up, and things got much more complicated.
“A swarm of honeybees came and landed on one section of the cockpit glass,” Kolkata airport director Kaushik Bhattacharjee told CNN.
“Thousands of bees just sat on the left side of the cockpit window blocking the view of the pilot.”
According to The Telegraph, workers who tried to remove them were attacked. Windshield wipers were not up to the task. Finally, someone had to call in the big guns: airport fire services.
A spokesperson for Air India told the paper that if the bees had flown into the engines, it could have “damaged the plane and harmed the passengers.”
Roughly an hour after the bee business began, the water cannon finally got rid of the problem and the plane took off for Agartala, CNN reported.