Nicely, right here’s a narrative that these of us with arachnophobia gained’t recognize (because of Klaus for flagging this)…
Iberia captain with spider allergy bitten by tarantula
This incident occurred on Friday, February 21, 2025, and entails Iberia flight IB754, from Dusseldorf (DUS) to Madrid (MAD). The 894-mile flight was operated by a 23-year-old Airbus A320 with the license plate EC-IEF.
Sooner or later across the center of the flight, the captain was reportedly bitten by a tarantula, whereas in his seat within the flight deck. To make issues worse, the captain has a spider allergy. So the crew urgently handled him with a corticosteroid from the primary help equipment, in an effort to forestall him from struggling an allergic response.
Regardless of the scare, the 2hr11min flight was accomplished with out challenge, and the captain was finally okay. Curiously, the passengers weren’t made conscious of what occurred, so I assume the crew did job protecting it on the down low. In all honesty, that’s in all probability for the higher, since I can solely think about the panic that data would’ve brought on.
The sophisticated search to search out the tarantula
It’s good that the aircraft was again on the bottom with the captain secure, however that wasn’t the tip of the saga. As you’d anticipate, there was one further wrinkle — the tarantula hadn’t truly been caught.
As soon as in Madrid, a full fumigation of the aircraft was carried out, following the corporate’s disinfection protocol. This brought on the connecting flight to Vigo (VIG) to be delayed by almost three hours. Initially, the passengers had reportedly been informed that the flight was delayed because of a technical fault, moderately than the true purpose… truthful sufficient, I suppose!
Sadly in any case of these procedures had been carried out, the spider nonetheless hadn’t been discovered. The actual purpose for the delay did finally get out, and passengers report that there was a tense ambiance onboard, with folks continually checking round their seats. The flight from Madrid to Vigo was initially speculated to depart at 7:45PM, however solely ended up taking off at 10:42PM.
I’ve gotta say, if a tarantula had gone “lacking” on an plane I used to be flying on a subsequent phase, I’d in all probability moderately simply not know. It’s fully potential that the spider died or escaped one way or the other, however nonetheless, the potential for realizing it may very well be alive and onboard would creep me out.
Backside line
An Iberia captain was reportedly bitten by a tarantula mid-flight. Worst of all, he had an allergy — luckily the crew handled him, and the flight continued with out incident. Nonetheless, the spider hadn’t been captured, so the disinfection protocol was carried out. The tarantula was by no means discovered. Hopefully it doesn’t reappear…
What do you make of this Iberia tarantula incident?
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