A Boeing 787 Dreamliner flying from Amsterdam to Mexico City on Friday was forced to divert to Bermuda after 100 live pigs being transported in the cargo hold of the plane started to kick up such a stench that it affected the “oxygen environment” in the cockpit.
The pilots of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight KL685 were forced to contact air traffic control around six hours into the transatlantic flight to Mexico with an unusual request to make an unscheduled stop in Bermuda due to what the Captain described as “obnoxious cargo.”
After entering a holding pattern off the coast of Bermuda, air traffic controllers contacted the pilots to gather more information about their decision to divert with the conversation captured by the Bermuda Flyer on Instagram.
After being asked whether emergency services would be required to meet the aircraft on arrival, the Captain explains that the diversion wasn’t an emergency, but there was “a lot of obnoxious cargo coming from pigs probably, which may have something to do with the oxygen environment in the cockpit, so that’s why I’m diverting.”
The air traffic controller then has to check that he has heard the pilot correctly, with the Captain replying: “Yeah, and those are probably the start of the inconvenience, so they’ll probably have to be offloaded.”
After landing in Bermuda, the pigs were removed from the aircraft and have been taken to a “secure location” where they are under the care of a veterinarian from the Bermudan government, a spokesperson for the airport operator explained.
In a statement, the spokesperson continued: “The characteristic smell of the hundred pigs in the cargo hold prompted the crew to move to Bermuda for a breather and fresh air.”
By the time the plane was on the ground and the pigs removed from the cargo hold, the crew could no longer legally work the rest of the flight to Mexico City, so the 259 passengers and crew had to be accommodated in local hotels.
The plane eventually departed Bermuda at around 11:00 pm on Saturday night and arrived in Mexico City in the early hours of Sunday morning.
In 2019, the pilots of an Air Canada Rouge flight between Vancouver and Montreal were forced to declare an inflight emergency and put on emergency oxygen masks because of an overpowering smell in the cockpit.
The smell was later traced to a shipment of Durian fruit, which is infamous for its ‘rank smelling’ odor.
Earlier this year, several flight attendants on a British Airways flight from Washington Dulles to London Heathrow were sickened due to the strong smell of laundry that caused “dizziness, nausea and headaches”.
The smell was later traced to a large shipment of laundry booster beads that was being transported in the cargo hold of the Airbus A380.
