Swarm of bees forces airliner to return home

A passenger jet has been forced to turn back an hour into a flight after a swarm of bees was sucked into one of its engines.

The Palmair Boeing 737 had just taken off from Bournemouth International Airport bound for Portugal, when it flew into the swarm shortly after takeoff. The pilot reported an engine surge nearly an hour into the journey and had to return on one engine.

During the flight, passengers had become increasingly alarmed as rattling noises came from the engine and were reassured by the pilot, who assumed that it was simply "carburettor trouble". It was only after the aircraft had been checked over by engineers on the ground that they realised what had caused the problem.

David Skillicorn, Palmair's managing director, said: "The engine looked as if someone had shaken 1,000 cans of coke and sprayed them onto it. This was not life-threatening because they [bees] came out of the back of the engine, but we must check each fan for any possible damage."

Mr Skillicorn added that bees flying into an aircraft's engine was an extremely rare event and that the engines were designed to cope with bird strikes.

An official from the British Pilots' Association said that the last bee strike on an aircraft they could remember happened nine years ago, which would explain why the pilot was confused as to the reason for the problems with his engine. On that occasion the incident happened just two days after a swarm of 20,000 bees descended on Bournemouth Pier.

A total of 196 passengers were affected by the flight on Thursday, with 90 attempting to continue their journey to the Algarve and a further 106 waiting to return to the UK.