All in all, not a brilliant few days of PR for United Airlines.
With the dust yet to settle on an incident last Sunday, where passenger David Dao was violently dragged off an overbooked aircraft for refusing to give up his seat to a member of staff, there’s now more unwanted headlines for the company.
On the very same day as that incident, it’s now being claimed that a Canadian man was stung by a scorpion while travelling business class on a different United Airlines flight.
Richard Bell has explained how the scorpion fell on to his head from one of the overhead storage compartments while he was having lunch during his flight from Houston, Texas to the Canadian city of Calgary.
“While I was eating, something fell in my hair from the overhead above me,” Mr Bell told CBC.
“I picked it up, and it was a scorpion. And I was holding it out by the tail, so it couldn’t really sting me then.”
After being warned that the creature was potentially dangerous by a fellow passenger, he put it on his plate, only for it to sting him when he attempted to (for some reason) pick it up for a second time.
“So I dropped it on my plate and then I went to pick it up again, and that’s when it stung me. It got my nail, mostly.”
A flight attendant later removed the scorpion, and Mr Bell was given precautionary pain killers. After landing, he was treated in hospital before eventually being released.
Although Mr Bell has added that he doesn’t intend to file any lawsuit against United for the incident, the airline has reportedly offered to compensate him with flying credits.
