Airlines are notorious for evading their obligation to compensate delayed passengers, and this time they're blaming a spider. A German court is ruling on whether the hairy arachnid can be blamed for a flight delay.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Roessler
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A French airline blamed an errant tarantula for massive flight delays in a court case in Germany on Friday.
Four passengers sued the airline after it refused to pay them €600 ($740) each in compensation, as required by European Union law for airline delays. The passengers were delayed almost five hours on a flight from Cuba to Hanover via Paris in February 2016.
The airline told the Hanover court it did not have to pay to pay because the delays were caused by the exotic invertebrate rather than technical problems.
It said it was legally required to fumigate and ground the airplane after the discovery of a tarantula in the business class section of the plane. However, the plaintiffs argued the delays were actually caused by a technical defect.
A 2004 EU regulation requires airlines pay passengers between €250 to €600 for cancellations, delays over four hours, or overbooking. Airlines are notorious for wriggling out of their obligations, leading to the rise of legal tech firms that specialize in making such claims.
5 animals you probably didn't know are related to celebrities
Tennis player Boris Becker as a nautilus; John Lennon as a tarantula. Scientific research can sometimes be tedious, but when scientists discover new animal species of animals, their imaginations sometimes go wild.
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Boris Becker
One of the slowest animals in the world is named after tennis ace Boris Becker. In 1996, the Munich-based biologist Manfred Parth discovered a new species of the snail genus Bufonaria off the Philippine coast. It was clear to the tennis fan that just one man could lend his name: Wimbledon-star Boris Becker. The snail is now called "Bufonaria borisbeckeri."
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Bruty
John Lennon
Granted, there are definitely more flattering things than to have a spider named after you. But nothing can stop real Beatles fans. When a team of researchers discovered a new tarantula species in the Brazilian rainforest, they felt it just had to be called "Bumba lennoni." John Lennon had already lent his name to a wasp species and an extinct arthropod.
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Ozzy Osbourne
A new bat frog species was named after the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, and is known as "Dendropsophus ozzyi." The reason behind it was Osbourne's special "affection" for bats: The frontman of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath once bit off a bat's head on stage. At least according to legend, that is.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Joe Strummer
Even marine researchers listen to punk rock. More precisely, biologist Shannon Johnson liked the British band The Clash. In tribute to the deceased frontman, she dubbed a deep sea snail "Alviniconcha strummeri." It lives in extreme conditions at depths of hundreds of feet close to hydrothermal springs, leading a dangerous "punk" life down there.
Mark Knopfler, rock dinosaur by trade, has an appropriate namesake since 2001. American paleontologists discovered a hitherto unknown carnivorous dinosaur in Madagascar and named it after the gifted guitarist: "Masiaksaurus knopfleri." They claimed that jamming to the music of Knopfler had inspired the expedition crew and pushed the search forward.
