Bats on a plane: loose bat flies around cabin mid-flight

Over a million Mexican free-tailed bats stream into the evening sky for a night of consuming insects in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin.

Passengers on a Spirit Airlines flight experienced quite the fright last week when a loose bat began tearing about the cabin mid-flight.

The creepy critter managed to get on board a 6:00 am flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Newark, New Jersey on Wednesday, and wasn’t found until half an hour into the flight when it began zooming up and down the cabin, according to HuffPost.

Twitter user @jpscattini managed to capture footage of the bat and posted it to Twitter, showing a dark cabin with people crouching in their seat and one woman hiding behind the bathroom door.

me, twice a year: “i’ll never fly spirit again.”
me, this morning, after deciding i’d rather save 12 dollars: pic.twitter.com/ASqk3bb89j
— Peter Scattini (@jpscattini) July 31, 2019

@adrillisasmiddle also managed to post footage in which you can hear a man saying “it’s the bat plane,” and a woman adds “It’s the batmobile, hey Batman!”

https://twitter.com/adrilisasmiddle/status/1156707485979484160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1156707485979484160&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Farticle%2Fbat-spirit-airlines-plane%2F

@jpscattini added that a passenger managed to trap the bat between a book and a cup and lock it in one of the bathrooms for the rest of the trip.

i also want to make clear that this bat appeared WHILE WE WERE 30 MINUTES INTO OUR FLIGHT. Where it came from? No idea. Eventually someone trapped it between a book & a cup and then locked it in one of the restrooms for the remainder of the trip #spiritairlines @SpiritAirlines https://t.co/1Z6ivdZjjn
— Peter Scattini (@jpscattini) August 1, 2019

Spirit Airlines confirmed in a statement to Travel Weekly that a stowaway bat was located on one of their recent flights.

“The bat was eventually corralled into a lavatory and removed once on the ground by animal control officers,” the airline said, adding it is likely the bat started its journey in Charlotte, flying into an overhead bin while the airline’s crews were doing overnight maintenance.

“No one was hurt in this incident, including the bat,” the airline said.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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