Flying bee grounds Flybe plane: Flight BE384 travelling from Southampton to Dublin faced a two-hour delay after insect got stuck in instrument
In what sounds like the premise of a Samuel L. Jackson b-movie, a bee has caused a Flybe plane to abort its flight.
This wasn’t bad plot line, however: passengers on Flybe flight BE384 travelling from Southampton to Dublin on Friday faced a two-hour delay in their plans after the flight was turned around just after take-off.
According to Flybe, engineers located the bee, which had become entangled with an outside instrument. It said:
Flybe can confirm that flight BE384 travelling to Dublin returned from airborne to Southampton following a suspected technical issue. The aircraft landed without incident and all passengers disembarked as normal.
Upon inspection, Flybe engineers did discover that the cause of the issue was a bee that had become lodged in an item of instrumentation on the outside of the aircraft.
The safety of its passengers and crew is the airline’s number one priority and Flybe regrets any inconvenience experienced as a result of the delay to this flight.
Twitter was rife with puns in the aftermath:
Well, that's not happened to me before. A bumble bee got stuck in the wind instrument thingie on #flyBe flight BE384. Yep, that FlyBEE.
— noelrooney (@noelrooney) June 5, 2015