Passengers arriving in Edinburgh on Tuesday 20th October got a surprise they weren’t bargaining for when one eagle eyed passenger saw a tarantula on the plane with them.
Staff members promptly swung into action to make sure everyone got off the plane safely and headed through the airport on their onward journey. But the plane wasn’t going anywhere – it was grounded and prohibited from heading back to London until the errant spider was found.
Apparently the passenger on the flight coming into Edinburgh Airport had looked down to see it wandering between his feet on the floor of the aircraft. He did the right thing and made staff aware of it, and upon landing a team of experts was brought in to try and find it. But although they thoroughly fumigated the cabin there was no further sign of the tarantula at any point.
So was it there at all or did the man see something else and misconstrued it to be a spider? According to the many reports which covered the incident no other passenger had seen anything. And despite searching the plane and looking in all the obvious – and less obvious places – no trace of a spider (tarantula or otherwise) was ever located.
According to experts it is a rarity for spiders to be found or seen on a flight within this country. It is more likely that it would happen on flights that have come in from other countries, but this wasn’t the case in this instance.
So the chances are that no one will ever know whether there was a tarantula on that flight or not. It could have been a case of mistaken identity, but then what else could be mistaken for a tarantula? Perhaps a more innocent form of spider – but we shall probably never know.
At any rate after the fumigation took place and all the searching had produced no results, the plane was finally put back into service again. Every step was taken to try to find the spider – if indeed there was one to find – but after that things got back to normal.
Of course given the size of a tarantula compared to the size of an aircraft, it could have gone anywhere. But since every conceivable step was taken to find it without success, there is very little chance that it will be seen again. Read more here.