United Airlines Flight Evacuated After Passengers Spot Scorpion on Board

United Flight 1035 was reportedly evacuated after the flight crew announced a scorpion crawled out of someone's bag.

May 12, 2017

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Complex Original

United Airlines is in the midst of a PR nightmare. And it seems to be only getting worse.

On Thursday evening, several people went to social media claiming they were evacuated from a plane after passengers spotted a scorpion on board. Mashable reports flight 1035 has, in fact, been delayed; however, the arachnid has not been found.

Passenger Joe Fagundes told ABC13 that the flight crew announced that a scorpion had crawled out of someone's bag. One man tweeted the evacuation occurred after a passenger was stung by the scorpion.

United issued a statement saying that "a scorpion reportedly emerged from a customer's clothing... [T]he customer determined that he had not been stung... We provided all passengers with a meal voucher due to the delay."

Does this story sound familiar? It should. Just last month, a scorpion reportedly stung a United Airlines passenger during a flight from Houston to Calgary. Linda Bell told CNN her husband, Richard, was eating lunch in business class when all of a sudden the scorpion fell from the overhead bin onto his head.

“My husband felt something in his hair. He grabbed it out of his hair and it fell onto his dinner table. As he was grabbing it by the tail it stung him," she told CNN.

Linda said United apologized for the incident and offered compensation, but she wouldn’t elaborate on the terms.

In 2015, an Alaskan Airlines flight headed to Portland had to make an emergency return to Los Angeles after a female passenger was stung by a scorpion. Officials told CNN they couldn’t determine how the scorpion made its way on the plane.