Mouse Grounds Departure

A mouse upset the best-laid plans of an airline and nearly 250 passengers in the Philippines, grounding a plane for 13 hours while engineers tried to smoke out the rodent. The plane was preparing for take-off from Manila airport earlier this week when a crew member spotted the mouse scampering across an aisle in the economy class section. The captain ordered the passengers to disembark while maintenance staff fumigated the aircraft and laid traps, but the mouse was nowhere to be found. The Doha-bound aircraft eventually took off 13 hours late, presumably with the mouse still on board, dead or alive.

Note a few interesting facts in this incident – it happened in the ECONOMY section or more commonly known as the ‘poor section’ of the aircraft. After the 13 hour ordeal they still took off hoping that the mouse had disappeared, maybe to return a few days later to haunt the crew again.

Update 2-hrs later (motivated after FunBie’s Comment to this post) – Now lets picturise a mouse found on a PIA flight out of Karachi, The crew in such situations will almost instinctively call in the ‘Jamadar’ (Janitor) on duty. The ‘Jamadar’ would walk typically with the ‘Jharoo’ (Broom) conveniently riding on his right shoulder, walk to towards the offending toilet, slam open the door and start whacking everything in sight, 5 minutes later close the door, and declare an all clear rodent-free flight. No Off-Loading, No fumigation, No Traps, just our typical Jammadar-Jahorro-Wielding-Chooha-Exterminator-Desi-Style. That’s PIA for you. Can you picturise anything different?