According to recent data there are roughly 4,000 medical ’emergencies’ per year among the 5 major airlines in the United States, and among those 0.3% of the emergencies are heart attacks. But I’m not here today to talk about heart attacks, I’m hear to talk about fart attacks, because a plane was recently forced to land after the smoke alarm went off to an overload of eggy flatulence causing an all out panic.
The culprits were 2,186 sheep flying from Australia to Kuala Lumpur but the plane and crew of 4 were forced to land in Bali, Indonesia after the sheep ripped so much ass they tripped the alarms. Just like dogs, sheep are susceptible to ‘bloat’, the condition of ‘excess gas’ that can be quite harmful to animals. According to this magazine about Sheep, they can succumb to bloat in situations of high stress, and I think it’s safe to classify 2,186 sheep flying together, huddled inside of a plane’s hull, farting up a storm. Even if all of the sheep weren’t stressed out to begin with I have to imagine after 10% of them started ripping ass beyond belief and suffocating with farts the rest of the sheep began to panic.
TheAviationHerald reports:
A Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter, registration 9V-SFI performing flight SQ-7108 from Sydney,NS (Australia) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) with 4 crew and a cargo of 2,186 sheep, was enroute at FL320 about 400nm south of Denpasar (Indonesia) when the crew received a smoke indication in a cargo bay, descended the aircraft to FL250 and diverted to Bali Denpasar for a safe landing about 45 minutes later. Emergency services did not find any trace of fire, heat or smoke.
The smoke indication was identified to be the result of exhaust gasses and manure produced by the sheep.
The aircraft was able to depart again after about 2.5 hours on the ground in Denpasar and reached Kuala Lumpur about 2.5 hours later.
Sheep always ruin everything, don’t they?
By the way, alternate headlines for this article included: ‘It’s A Bird? It’s A Plane? Nope, Just A Plane Suffocating On Farts’ or ‘FART ATTACK: Plane Forced To Land After Cabin Suffocates On Eggy Flatulence’. I’m not sure that either of those headlines are good, or better, or if the headline I used for this article is even good. I just knew that I really needed to spread the tale of the emergency landing due to excessive flatulence on this cloudy Tuesday morning.
I can’t help but think about George Carlin when I read about this post and his ‘test farting on a plane’ bit:
[h/t Daily Mail]