NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Ants crawled on passengers during a flight from Italy Monday morning before their aircraft finally arrived at Newark Airport and was taken out of service.
United Flight 169 was leaving Venice when those aboard noticed ants were on seats, windows, overhead bins – and even them.
Passenger Charlotte Burns wrote up a detailed account of the unsettling experience on Twitter.
“On the plane from Venice to New York when a large, fat ant walks over my pillow,” she said in the first of many tweets.
Before they had even taken off, Burns says an ant crawled over her arm and another across a TV screen.
She writes that a passenger saw a “parade” of ants and that the insects were soon “expanding their march.”
A man eventually pulled down his suitcase and “ants spill out in every which direction,” she writes.
A spokesperson for the airline released a statement, saying “the ants have been isolated from a customer’s bag and the affected areas have been wiped down.”
“At this time, the aircraft will continue to its final destination. We will be taking the aircraft out of service when it arrives in Newark,” the statement reads.