HOUSTON – It’s been a rough week for United Airlines.
The same day a passenger was infamously dragged off a United plane in Chicago, a man on a United flight from Houston to Calgary was allegedly stung by a scorpion.
The venomous creature fell from an overhead bin and landed on Richard Bell’s hair as he was eating lunch Sunday in his business class seat, according to his wife Linda.
“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.
She said her husband shooed the scorpion off his tray and it landed in the aisle, catching the attention of a nearby passenger who cried, “Oh my god, that’s a scorpion.”
It’s not clear how the scorpion got on the plane. The airplane had flown to Houston earlier in the day from Costa Rica, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking platform.
The Bells were returning home from a vacation.
Linda Bell said flight attendants quickly corralled the scorpion and flushed it down an airplane toilet.
“Our flight attendants helped a customer who was stung by what appeared to be a scorpion on a flight last week,” United said in a statement. “Our crew immediately consulted with a MedLink physician on the ground who provided guidance throughout the incident and assured our crew that it was not a life-threatening matter.”
United Airlines said medical personnel met the aircraft when it arrived in Calgary.
According to Linda Bell, another passenger gave her husband a Benadryl pill in case he had an allergic reaction to the sting.
Linda Bell said United reached out to her husband Wednesday to apologize and to offer compensation for the incident. She would not elaborate on the terms of that compensation.
Such incidents are rare, but not unheard of. A scorpion reportedly stung a woman in 2015 on an Alaska Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon.
