Nearly every airline requires animals to be confined inside a carrier when they fly. However, passengers on a Spirit Airlines flight last week were startled to see a rodent scurrying above them inside a cabin light fixture. It’s not clear how the “super rat” got onboard, but the unusual passenger had far more legroom than anyone else. The incident raised a lot of questions, included if the rodent was even a rat to begin with.
A video recorded by a passenger on a Spirit flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Los Angeles went viral on Instagram. The footage shows the creature moving around with its claws visible against the light covers. One passenger called it “a super rat,” although some commenters speculated that it could be a raccoon. Living in New York, I’m far too familiar with rats, and I’ve seen a few large enough to confuse them with cats.
To be fair, Spirit Airlines has been struggling financially since its merger with JetBlue was shot down by the courts earlier this year. The low-cost carrier is now reopening talks with Frontier about a merger. Spirit announced on Thursday that it’s selling 23 Airbus A320-series planes for $519 million. The airline is also considering staff layoffs. For all we know, the rat could have been a paying passenger helping to keep Spirit afloat.
