Pilots, passengers react to pigeons on board MSP flight to Madison: "Are you ready for this?"
The old adage says birds of a feather fly together, but they probably didn't mean they fly commercial.
"The pilot gets on and says, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we have a wildlife situation on the plane,'" passenger Tom Caw recalled to WCCO. "And everyone is laughing at this point."
Caw was traveling back from California to Madison, Wisconsin, when he boarded his connection at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Sunday night.
"When I boarded everything seemed normal," he said. "Then I went to sit down and I overheard a passenger come up to the flight attendant who was standing right by where I was, and she said, 'I think there's a pigeon on this plane.'"
According to Caw, the pigeon was walking underneath the seats; a Delta Air Lines baggage handler then came aboard and safely removed the bird in time for an on-time pushback from the gate just after 10 p.m.
As the plane taxied to the runway, pilots radioed Air Traffic Control.
"Are you ready for this?" the pilot quipped, according to the recording from Broadcastify. "There's a pigeon on the airplane and it won't go away."
Sure enough, passengers located a second pigeon and this time, Caw added, the bird took flight looking for a way out. That's when Caw grabbed his phone and hit record.
"So I got my phone out just as it was flying back toward the rear of the cabin, and a passenger in the video stands up and tries to catch it with his jacket," Caw said. "The woman next to me was quite panicky about it, and she said to me, 'Oh I'm going to need a free wine. I'm going to need a free wine out of this.'"
The flight returned to the gate and Caw said the same baggage handler returned to take the second bird off the plane.
"I think I learned that every day has a surprise in it for you," Caw joked. "And sometimes you'll never guess and you'll never see the surprise coming."
A spokeswoman for Delta Air Lines said the flight arrived safely in Madison about an hour behind schedule.
"Delta appreciates the careful actions of our people and our customers," the spokeswoman told WCCO in a statement. "We apologize to our customers for the delay in their travel."
