A TAP plane has been held at Ponta Delgada Airport in the Azores since Tuesday after 132 hamsters escaped from the boxes in which they were being transported and were left loose in the hold.

Airport workers have been trying to recapture all of the animals for four days, which prevented the aircraft from returning to Lisbon for safety reasons.

On Saturday, 16 of these rodents, small but capable of destroying electrical cables, were still loose inside the Airbus 321.

The plane left Lisbon bound for Ponta Delgada with passengers and their luggage, as well as a package for a pet shop: more than a hundred hamsters, ferrets and also some birds. But when they landed, the baggage collection teams noticed that the boxes were damaged and the rodents were loose.

Airline sources say that the same order had been prevented from boarding another flight, as the transport boxes were not in compliance, but were accepted on the next flight.

The aircraft finally returned to Lisbon Sunday, November 17 2024.

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