High-Flying Hamsters on the Rampage

A flight was grounded in the Azores after 130 hamsters escaped their cages during the flight from Portugal.  They were found roaming around the cargo area of the Airbus 320 after baggage handlers unloading luggage discovered their damaged cages.

Workers were desperately rounding up the power cable-eating rodents-- 16 critters were still missing after five days on the ground. The hamsters were part of a delivery for a pet shop on the island which also included ferrets and some birds. The mass break-out forced the flight to be grounded instead of continuing its journey back to Lisbon.

Sources told a local newspaper that the animals had been accepted on the flight after being turned away from an earlier one because the previous cages “didn’t meet accepted standards".  TAP Air Portugal, the airline operating the flight, has yet to make any official comment.

Hamsters like to munch on cables and wires which could potentially damage aircraft.  In 2016, hundreds of hamsters broke loose inside a Boeing jet that was forced out of service. The pilot of the Amsterdam-bound flight said at the time: "We came to the aircraft, and the mayhem just happened."

In 2006, a hamster secretly being carried by a passenger escaped and caused chaos on a plane to Austria. That flight, which originated in Mallorca, Spain was forced to make a stop in Innsbruck so officials could search for the hamster and make sure it didn’t cause any damage.