Air India's Delhi-London flight, which was to depart from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at 2 pm on Monday, got delayed for more than three hours after a swarm of ants was found in the business class, sources said.
The AI-111 flight departed from the Delhi airport at around 5.20 pm instead of its scheduled departure time of 2 pm, they said.
Later in the evening, Air India posted on its Twitter account that 'it was not a swarm of ants and definitely not an aborted take off'.
However, the sources confirmed that a large number of ants were found in a section of the business class just before the plane was about to take off for London.
The plane was then replaced with another Boeing 787-8 aircraft.
A similar incident had taken place on May 27 when Air India's flight to Newark in the US had to return to the Delhi airport after cabin crew members saw a bat flying inside the aircraft just after take off.
The pilots then informed the air traffic controller about the mammal and the aircraft was turned around.
Once the plane had landed on the evening of May 27 and everyone was out of the aircraft, the Boeing B777-300ER aircraft was fumigated and the bat died, following which its carcass was recovered from the eighth row of the business class.
