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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- | ||
| Terror at 30,000 feet | ||
| 2016-05-22 | ||
| Catherine Moreau was watching a movie on her iPad on a flight to Montreal when she felt what she thought was a wire brushing against her. At least it wasn't snakes. "I brushed [it] away and it started tickling me again. That's when I noticed the tarantula," Moreau told CBC News. Does she have an island somewhere? "I hit it to get it off me before it bit." What's that climbing up my wall? Black and hairy very small. Where's he gone now I can't see. Hope that he's as scared as me. Boris the Spider. Now Moreau is asking Air Transat for a partial refund over her encounter with the spider. The tarantula that climbed her leg was one of two on a Montreal-bound Air Transat flight from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, on April 18, the airline and the union representing its flight attendants have confirmed. Didn't stay in their seats and fasten seatbelts. Passengers screamed and stood on their seats after learning they shared the cabin with the eight-legged critters. Julie Roberts, vice-president of Air Transat's flight attendant union, said flight attendants "did what they could to calm people down." "They gave first aid to the person who said that a spider climbed [her] legs," she said. Flight attendants also asked passengers to put on their shoes and cover their ankles. Moreau wants the four flight tickets for her family partially reimbursed by Air Transat. The incident left her scratched and her 11-year-old daughter suffering from shock, she said. According to Moreau, after she brushed the spider off her leg, it hid under her daughter's luggage. Her husband came and grabbed it and asked for a bag from the cabin crew to hold the spider. "It took a long time from when we screamed to get a bag to put it in," Moreau said. That delay was only the beginning of her grievances with Air Transat. Her daughter has been suffering from nightmares. In addition, Moreau was promised a report from Air Transat so she could identify the spider in case the scratches led to health issues. She never got the report.
She also claims she was stopped from taking a photograph of the spider that would have helped her identify the species. While the tarantula that crawled up her leg remained in custody, the other spider continued to roam the plane before being recovered by a federal agent once the plane landed at Montreal's Trudeau Airport.
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| Posted by:Deacon Blues |
| #1 Indeed Doc. It's the old theory of I am bring two large, albeit mostly friendly, poisonous arachnids on board my flight, the odds of spiders and jacket wallahs approaches zero. QED LSMFT |
| Posted by: Shipman 2016-05-22 00:50 |