A TAP Air Portugal plane was grounded for four days after over 130 hamsters broke loose inside the cargo hold and ran riot as they evaded capture from airport staff, according to local reports.
The rodent escapees had been on a passenger flight from Lisbon to Ponta Delgada on São Miguel Island, part of the Portuguese Azores, on Wednesday 13 November, and were due to be delivered to a pet store along with ferrets and caged birds, airline sources told the Portuguese daily newspaper Correio da Manhã.
When airport staff at Ponta Delgada Airport started to unload the pet transport boxes from the plane, they realised that the ones meant to contain the hamsters were damaged and empty.
The TAP Air Portugal plane reportedly had to be grounded for safety reasons while staff got to work to try to find all 132 hamsters.
It took airport staff several days to spot and catch all the hamsters that were hiding and scurrying around the cargo hold, with the remaining 16 finally caught on Sunday.
Images posted by the Portuguese newspaper show a person pinching a hamster by the scruff of the neck in what appears to be the cabin, as well as another person in gloves holding a hamster. The images have not been independently verified by The Independent.
Once all hasters had been caught, the Airbus A321neo made the journey back to Lisbon on a “ferry flight”, meaning no passengers were on board, the publication reported.
A flight from Ponta Delgada, TP9260, landed in Lisbon, where TAP’s headquarters are located, on Sunday at 1.30pm after a two-hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean without fault, data from FlightRadar shows.
TAP Air Portugal will reportedly now undergo in-depth checks on the aircraft to make sure that no serious damage was caused by the hamsters.
This incident comes weeks after passengers on a flight to Los Angeles were shocked by an apparent stowaway.
In a viral video posted in October that has gained over three million views across TikTok and Instagram, one passenger captured the moment that a silhouette of what appears to be a type of rodent or possum was crawling about inside a light fixture on the cabin ceiling on board a plane.
Social media commenters and other outlets suggested the plane belongs to Spirit Airlines due to the yellow colour scheme inside the cabin.
The airline said they were “aware of the video and are taking steps to address this matter”.
Rodents causing havoc on planes are nothing new, as another airline also found a rodent hiding in an in-flight meal in September.
A Scandinavian Airlines flight, from the Norwegian capital Oslo to Malaga in the south of Spain, was diverted to Copenhagen after a live mouse leapt out of the meal.
The passengers were later flown to Malaga on a different aircraft.
The Independent has contacted TAP Air Portugal and Ponta Delgada Airport for comment.
For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast