TARANTULAS ON A PLANE

'It started tickling me': Passenger recounts horror at meeting tarantula on Air Transat flight; Quebec woman thought she was hallucinating as tarantula climbed up her leg

By Elysha Enos

CBC News
May 20, 2016

Catherine Moreau was watching a movie on her iPad on a flight to Montreal when she felt what she thought was a wire brushing against her.

"I brushed [it] away and it started tickling me again. That's when I noticed the tarantula," Moreau told CBC News.

"I hit it to get it off me before it bit."

Now Moreau is asking Air Transat for a partial refund over her encounter with the spider.

The tarantula that climbed her leg was one of two on a Montreal-bound Air Transat flight from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, on April 18, the airline and the union representing its flight attendants have confirmed.

Passengers screamed and stood on their seats after learning they shared the cabin with the eight-legged critters.

Julie Roberts, vice-president of Air Transat's flight attendant union, said flight attendants "did what they could to calm people down."

"They gave first aid to the person who said that a spider climbed [her] legs," she said. Flight attendants also asked passengers to put on their shoes and cover their ankles.

Calls for a refund

Moreau wants the four flight tickets for her family partially reimbursed by Air Transat. The incident left her scratched and her 11-year-old daughter suffering from shock, she said.

According to Moreau, after she brushed the spider off her leg, it hid under her daughter's luggage. Her husband came and grabbed it and asked for a bag from the cabin crew to hold the spider.

"It took a long time from when we screamed to get a bag to put it in," Moreau said.

That delay was only the beginning of her grievances with Air Transat.

Her daughter has been suffering from nightmares. In addition, Moreau was promised a report from Air Transat so she could identify the spider in case the scratches led to health issues. She never got the report.

She said she sent the airline a registered letter about her complaint, which they signed for a week ago, but still hasn't heard back.

She also claims she was stopped from taking a photograph of the spider that would have helped her identify the species.

While the tarantula that crawled up her leg remained in custody, the other spider continued to roam the plane before being recovered by a federal agent once the plane landed at Montreal's Trudeau Airport

According to Moreau, after she brushed the spider off her leg, it hid under her daughter's luggage. Her husband came and grabbed it and asked for a bag from the cabin crew to hold the spider.

"It took a long time from when we screamed to get a bag to put it in," Moreau said.

That delay was only the beginning of her grievances with Air Transat.

Her daughter has been suffering from nightmares. In addition, Moreau was promised a report from Air Transat so she could identify the spider in case the scratches led to health issues. She never got the report.

She said she sent the airline a registered letter about her complaint, which they signed for a week ago, but still hasn't heard back.

She also claims she was stopped from taking a photograph of the spider that would have helped her identify the species.

While the tarantula that crawled up her leg remained in custody, the other spider continued to roam the plane before being recovered by a federal agent once the plane landed at Montreal's Trudeau Airport

EDITOR’S NOTE: Shades of the movie, Snakes on a Plane.

Holy Shit! "The market for live tarantulas is very lucrative," I didn’t know that. While I was on patrol near Riverside, I found a hill that was crawling with tarantulas. Every so often I would stop by there to spend a few minutes – OK, I was fucking off – to play with the fuzzy critters. I even took one to an Elks Lodge meeting and dropped it in the collection hat when I got fined. (What happened when the guy collecting the fines … well that’s another story in itself.) Had I known those tarantulas were lucrative, I would have made a pot full of money.