An Allegiant Air flight from Las Vegas to Duluth, Minn., was forced to turn back to Sin City because it hit a swarm of bees, which caused a terrible smell to fill the plane.
According to the Duluth News Tribune, Allegiant Air Flight 448 was just leaving Las Vegas when it struck a swarm of bees. The collision caused the bees to enter the plane's engines and the windshield was clouded. The smell also raised alarm among passengers, WDIO reports.
"I mean you hear about hitting birds, but not bees!" Allegiant Flight 448 passenger Cassandra Rogers told WDIO. Rogers said the passengers couldn't feel anything but a smell had filtered into the cabin of the plane. Some passengers described the smell as sulfur, which caused some of the passengers to panic.
"Right as the plane lifted it just stunk, like the plane was on fire. It smelled like the whole cabin was on fire," passenger Misty Newman told WDIO.
The plane wasn't in the air for very long before the pilot decided it was best to turn back. Some passengers thought the pilot was joking when he said the decision to turn back was because of bees. The crew aborted the flight and turned back to Las Vegas, where the aircraft landed without issue.
"When we landed the fire department and the cops were waiting and they took off along the runway after us," Newman said. The plane was surrounded by emergency vehicles.
There were more than 160 passengers on the flight. They were put on a different plane and arrived in Minnesota about two hour later than originally scheduled.
"We thought he [the pilot] was joking when he said ,'I've never had that happen before. We hit thousands of bees," said Rogers.
However this isn't the first time a plane was affected by bees. Over the summer, a plane in Charlotte, N.C. couldn't take off until a swarm of bees cleared. In the summer of 2012, a Delta Airlines flight from Pittsburg also couldn't take off until a master beekeeper was called in to remove a swarm of bees that were on the wing.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
