Manila: Investigators are looking into the sudden appearance of a swarm of bees at the capital region's airport Thursday after the insects caused considerable inconvenience to passengers and disrupted the schedule of several arriving flights.
Manila International Airport Authority general manager Jose Angel Honrado said the unusual presence of swarms of bees inside and near the five boarding tubes at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 (NAIA 2) delayed the disembarkation process and troubled hundreds of arriving passengers.
"We are looking into this incident," he said in radio interviews adding that initial investigations showed that an arriving passenger had brought in honeybees aboard the flight.
A customer agent of Philippine Airlines, Jerome Guerra, said the bee swarm incident at the airport had affected five local and two international flights.
According to Honrado, the insects most likely had escaped from the cargo hold area of the aircraft and had made their way to the boarding tubes.
He said the bees were apparently smuggled into the plane since passengers are not allowed to bring such live animals into the aircraft without necessary permits from regulatory authorities.
Inconvenience
The presence of bees inside the boarding tubes at around 12: 30 pm Thursday had caused considerable inconvenience to passengers as well as the aircraft service crew. Several ground personnel were report to have been stung by the bees while attempting to get close to the insects to shoo them away.
Instead of going through the usual route of using the aero bridges after exiting the aircraft and passing to the enclosed baggage claim area, the passengers had to disembark from the plane through the ramps and then board waiting busses at the tarmac.
The bees were able to hold off the ground crew from servicing the aircraft for 30 minutes until personnel using powerful vacuum cleaners and smoke generators cleared the boarding tubes of the insects.
While bees at the boarding tubes were considered a nuisance in the particular case at the NAIA Thursday, bees on the other hand are a welcome presence in at the Hamburg-Fuhlsbuttel Airport in Germany where the insect serve the purpose as air quality monitors.
The Hamburg-Fuhlsbuttel is the first airport in Europe to use bees to monitor and clean the surrounding air of harmful contaminants, according to an article published in the German news website, the "The Local."
