A flight from Moscow to St Petersburg was delayed by about an hour after thousands of bees attacked the passenger plane, attaching themselves to its wing and covering the windows.
The bees swarmed the Rossiya Airline’s plane as it was about to start taxiing ahead of taking off from Vnukovo Airport bound for St Petersburg.
The bees flew from under a wing; some attached themselves to the wing, while others covered windows of the Airbus-319. Two ambulances were called to the plane amid fears that the bees might get inside the cabin.
Airport staff then ‘efficiently and quickly’ removed the bees from the plane’s fuselage. The flight was delayed by slightly under an hour.
It is not the first time bees have caused problems for an aircraft.
Last month, a plane from Southampton, UK, to Dublin, Ireland, was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing due to a bee that had become lodged in an item of instrumentation on the outside of the aircraft.
