Delhi-London Air India flight delayed after ants found in business class

NEW DELHI: Air India’s Delhi-London flight, which was to depart from the IGI airport here at 2 pm on Monday, got delayed for more than three hours after a swarm of ants was found in the business class, sources said.

The AI-111 flight departed from the Delhi airport at around 5.20 pm instead of its scheduled departure time of 2 pm, they said.

Later in the evening, Air India posted on its Twitter account that “it was not a swarm of ants and definitely not an aborted take off”.

However, the sources confirmed that a large number of ants were found in a section of the business class just before the plane was about to take off for London.

The plane was then replaced with another Boeing 787-8 aircraft.

A similar incident had taken place on May 27 when Air India’s flight to Newark in the US had to return to the Delhi airport after cabin crew members saw a bat flying inside the aircraft just after take off.