A Portuguese airline was forced to ground one of its passenger planes last week after discovering that 132 hamsters had escaped from cages in the cargo hold and roamed free throughout the aircraft, according to an aviation news website in the country.
A TAP airlines Airbus A321neo that flew from Lisbon to the Azores island of Ponta Delgada on Nov. 13 was taken out of service after its arrival and for four days as ground crew members scoured the plane for the rodents, according to the Aviação TV news website.
Reports by multiple Portuguese news outlets cited anonymous sources as saying baggage handlers had first noticed damaged cages after the plane landed, and then saw the hamsters running amok in the cargo hold.
The animals were part of a delivery intended for a pet shop, which also included ferrets and birds, according to the Observador news website. There were no reports of other animals getting free in the plane, which has a capacity to carry about 200 passengers.
TAP Air Portugal did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment on this story.
On Monday, five days after it first landed, the aircraft made the 902-mile journey back to Lisbon, where TAP’s headquarters and maintenance center are located. The plane was flown back without passengers and was to undergo a thorough inspection, according to the Correio da Manhã newspaper. Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 showed a special flight landing in Lisbon from Ponta Delgada at about 1 p.m. on Monday.
Correio da Manhã also published a video purportedly shot by one of the baggage handlers that appeared to show some of the hamsters scurrying around inside the aircraft’s baggage hold. Other images, which CBS News could not independently verify, showed a hamster being pulled out of a crevasse in the plane’s infrastructure by a handler wearing protective gloves.