Scandal-hit United Airlines is feeling the pinch after a passenger in business class reported being stung by a scorpion during a flight from Houston in Texas to Calgary in Canada. The airline company is already under stinging criticism after forcibly removing a passenger from an overbooked flight earlier this week.
Richard Bell, a Canadian national, said he and his wife were having lunch when the scorpion fell on his head from the overhead locker where his laptop case and another passenger’s guitar case were stored.
"I dropped it on my plate and then I went to pick it up again, and that's when it stung me," Bell recalled.
He then shook the scorpion onto the floor, and a flight attendant came and covered the creature with a cup before killing it with a shoe and flushing it down the toilet.
A nurse, who happened to be on board, provided painkillers to the passenger, who was taken to the hospital after landing. Luckily, he was released soon after his physical checkup showed he was unharmed.
“The crew and everything was fantastic,” Bell said. “When we landed, there was all kinds of commotion with EMS and border control."
Bell added that he had no plans to stop flying with United Airlines or file a lawsuit against the company, which had offered him flying credit as compensation.
The incident occurred on Sunday, the same day a 69-year-old Vietnamese American doctor, David Dao, was beaten and dragged violently off an overbooked plane at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. The shocking happening was caught on tape and widely shared on social media platforms and media outlets, unleashing a deluge of worldwide condemnation with people calling for boycotting the US airline and the stepping down of its CEO Oscar Munzo.