Crabs Delay US Airways Flight From New York’s LaGuardia Airport

Officials at New York’s LaGuardia Airport were faced with a unique predicament when they had to delay a U.S. Airways flight for over 30 minutes owing to a strange reason. According to The Trentonian, the U.S. Airways Flight 890, which was scheduled to depart LaGuardia at 7 p.m. on Friday, did not take off until half an hour later — not because of your usual maintenance and weather issues. Instead, the delay was attributed to the time taken to, believe it or not, remove an unruly group of crabs running amok in the cargo hold of the aircraft!

According to CNN, the U.S. Airways flight was delayed after a “good number of crabs” were found inside the cargo hold of the aircraft. The news about the crabs being found inside the cargo hold was later confirmed by Josh Freed, a spokesman for American Airlines Group, the parent company of U.S. Airways.

While it is unclear as to how the crustaceans made it to the usually secure cargo hold of an aircraft, it is now thought that they were in transit on the aircraft during an earlier flight and had managed to escape from their cages/containers. The CNN report adds that at the time of publishing, it was unclear why the crabs were being transported using the plane.

However, it is pertinent to note that cargo holds of commercial passenger flights are commonly used to transport live animals — and this time, crabs! Thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Airways maintenance staff, all of the free running crabs were finally re-captured and secured, after which U.S. Airways Flight 890 departed for Charlotte, North Carolina, a little over 30 minutes late. The flight had originated from Charlotte as well.

Perhaps the strangest part of the entire episode was the predicament of the U.S. Airways officials when they were told to announce the reason for the delay of their flight! Anna Scarcella, a lady on board the flight, tweeted the following.

“Ladies and gentlemen your flight is delayed b/c a box of live crabs spilled out in the cargo bin during flight” @USAirways how is this real

— Anna Scarcella (@Cscarcella) October 2, 2014

Anna later told CNN, “I think everyone appreciates knowing the cause for their delays and I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t find this funny.”

People aboard the U.S. Airways aircraft might have been reminded about the 2006 movie Snakes on a Plane following the incident. In fact, people took to Twitter using the hashtag #CrabsOnAPlane to talk about the incident!

This is not the first time The Inquisitr has reported about strange reasons for flight delays! But, this one certainly takes the cake!

[Image Via Wikimedia Commons]