If you beleive this was natural . . .

[Ron Caliburn]

I gots a bridge ta sell ya

LONDON (AP) - A thick cloud of bees forced a passenger jet pilot to abandon a holiday flight and ground passengers for 11 hours, according to an airline executive.


A Palmair Boeing 737 travelling from Bournemouth, on the southern English coast, to Faro, in Portugal, was forced to turn back when a swarm of the insects was sucked into an engine.


Palmair managing director David Skillicorn said the pilot experienced an engine surge about an hour into the flight.


He said after the pilot returned to Bournemouth, they found what appeared to be "a large number of bees smeared inside the engine."


Skillicorn said a huge cloud of the insects was seen off the Bournemouth coast shortly before the flight on Thursday, and that "some witnesses claimed there were around 20,000 bees."


He added about 200 passengers were delayed while the company carried out repairs and eventually replaced the aircraft.

[Shadowstalker]

Ok that sounds majorly weird.

[KonThaak]

I can imagine of people being able to get bees to swarm in those numbers... What gets me is *why* they would do such a thing. I wonder if this really could just be a natural occurrence, because why bother grounding a flight for 11 hours, if it's just going to take off again eventually, anyway?

Then again, I can't imagine why bees would swarm in those numbers naturally in the first place, either.

So this one officially has me brain-buggered. o_O

[Bert_the_Turtle]

It might have been a freak natural occurance.

Or maybe they had intended to make all the engines fail and didn't plan well enough?

Or any other number of things.

[Holister]

Bees massing at that height means a swarm migration. It is the only time that such a mass of bees would be at that height and in such a large number.

My guess is that a fairly large bee crop escaped and fled due to the prime colony being destroyed. Along the way it grew in mass.

Its not that uncommon an occurance actually, but I have never heard a plane being forced to land because of it.

Well once. but that was due to a smuggled cargo of live bees brought onto a plane and the shipment broke open during transit. Like twelve people required hospitalization and one died from anaplatic shock due to allergy.


You could technically toss a human body through a jet engine and it wouldn't skip a beat. So why would some bees {yes I know they were in the tens' of thousands} force it to land. I think you should focus more on the relanding of the plane for answers.

[KonThaak]

Well, the plane was going a long distance, and they were only an hour into the flight... Speaking as someone who drives vehicles for a living, if you experience technical problems with your vehicle early on in your trip, it's often a much safer idea to turn around and get it checked out, make sure you're not going to blow up or something during the course of your day.

It might've just been the pilot erring on the side of caution.

[Ron Caliburn]

You mean to tell me that bees naturally fly at that altitude?

Naw, the bee story is a cover up for something else.

[KonThaak]

I'm not telling you one way or the other... I don't know anything about bees. Of course, I could look it up...

[mrslater13]

Now we may have an alternative explanation for sudden colony collapse, the bees are getting sucked int jet engine intakes. Might be a good idea to figure out a way to stop this bee suicide before there aren't any left to pollinate the plants.

[A. Pendragon]

It was probably Gremlin guts they found inside the engine.

[Ron Caliburn]

Now we may have an alternative explanation for sudden colony collapse, the bees are getting sucked int jet engine intakes. Might be a good idea to figure out a way to stop this bee suicide before there aren't any left to pollinate the plants.

Sounds more like a Kamikaze to me. I think Pendragon has the more probable explanation.

[A. Pendragon]

Perhaps we can get someone down to examine where they are keeping the damaged parts to do a reading? If it was "paranormal" there might be some sort of residual energy left behind.

[Ron Caliburn]

Well, you're the one with the contacts in England, let us know what they turn up.