The passenger jet was at maximum speed and seconds from taking off when the pilot let out a scream. A “large, hairy” spider had just bitten him on his hand.
The incident happened last Friday when the Iberia airlines Airbus A320, bound for Düsseldorf, was about to take off from Madrid airport. “He screamed when he felt the pain,” said a source quoted by La Voz de Galicia newspaper.
“But he maintained the controls while the co-pilot quickly took charge of the aircraft to activate the autopilot as soon as possible,” the report continued.
Chaotic scenes then played out in the cockpit as the co-pilot tried to use what was at hand to fend off what appeared to be a tarantula. “Seeing that the spider then ascended the commander’s arm, he took one of the plane’s manuals and with it tried to crush the spider or at least tried to push it away from the pilot.”
The alarming incident, at the most critical moment of the flight with no possibility of aborting takeoff, was not reported to passengers.
“The spider was large and hairy and emerged unexpectedly biting the commander at the most critical moment of the plane’s takeoff, in its rotation, when the landing gear stops touching the runway,” La Voz de Galicia reported an unnamed crew member as saying.
Iberia confirmed the facts, while being unable to identify what type of spider had bitten the pilot.
The Iberia Airbus A320 was fumigated twice after the incident
MATEUSZ ATROSZKO/GETTY IMAGES
The medical kit carried on the flight deck was used to calm the pilot’s pain by treatment with oral antihistamines, allowing the flight to continue.
The plane, an Airbus A320 which can carry up to 171 passengers, was fumigated in Düsseldorf and again on its return to Madrid, creating a three-hour delay to its next journey to Vigo, northwest Spain.
Ángel González, an aviation commander and member of Sepla, the Spanish Union of Airline Pilots, said: “In this case, there has been perfect crew resource management. They had tenths of a second to think and act at a crucial moment such as take-off.”
It is thought that the spider may have boarded the plane during a stopover in Casablanca, Morocco.