Loose Bat Terrorizes Spirit Airlines Passengers Mid-Flight

“Where it came from? No idea,” said passenger Peter Scattini, who says he eventually got a full refund from the airline.
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Well, here’s something scarier than Spirit Airlines’ arbitrary fees.

Passengers aboard one of the budget airline’s flights from North Carolina to New Jersey were spooked Wednesday morning when a bat randomly began flying around the cabin.

Peter Scattini, a 23-year-old passenger on the 6 a.m. flight from Charlotte to Newark, posted a video of the incident on Twitter that’ll make some want to clutch their emotional support animals.

“Me, twice a year: ‘i’ll never fly Spirit again.’ Me, this morning, after deciding i’d rather save 12 dollars:” Scattini wrote before sharing a video of the flying mammal squeaking as it flew down the aisle.

Another passenger also tweeted about the experience. In the background of the video, you can hear a man say, “It’s the bat plane!”

In an email, Scattini told HuffPost why he decided to take a gamble on Spirit that fateful day.

“I’ve had multiple poor experiences on Spirit, but their fares are consistently the cheapest and I had to buy a last minute flight to New York for an audition,” Scattini, a professional actor and videographer said. “So Spirit made the most sense!”

The bat appeared 30 minutes into the roughly 90-minute flight, according to Scattini.

“Passengers started screaming and yelling, and very quickly things devolved into chaos,” Scattini told HuffPost.

He also added on Twitter:

“Where it came from? No idea. Eventually someone trapped it between a book & a cup and then locked it in one of the restrooms for the remainder of the trip.”

Scattini estimated that the whole ordeal lasted about five minutes. He said the crew was very quick to calm people down and made sure that everyone was OK and had not been bitten. After determining there was no need to stop, “we continue the flight through to Newark,” he said.

Spirit Airlines confirmed to HuffPost that “a stowaway bat” was present on the flight from Charlotte to Newark and that it was “removed once on the ground by animal control officers.”

“The aircraft was disinfected and searched as a precaution,” a representative from Spirit said in a statement. “It is believed the bat started its journey in Charlotte, flying into an overhead bin while our crews were doing overnight maintenance.”

The company added that no one was hurt during the incident.

Scattini said that after his tweet went viral, Spirit reached out to him and offered a $50 flight voucher.

“Once I expressed displeasure with this, they refunded the cost of the flight,” he told HuffPost.

Considering that the 2017 American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked Spirit dead last, Twitter users who saw Scattini’s video had plenty to say.

Here’s hoping that Dwight Schrute from “The Office” wasn’t somehow responsible for all of this.

This post has been updated to include comment from Spirit Airlines.

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