'For the 1st hour, it was really novel': Raccoon delays Air Canada flight

A raccoon stuck inside an Air Canada jet delayed a Toronto-bound flight for several hours on Thursdayat Saskatoon'sairport.

The animal was apparently, according to the airline,hidden inside the hose of an air conditioning unit when a ground crew connected the unit to the plane.

The raccoon then "scampered up and into the duct system," of theEmbraerE190, said spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick in an email to CBCNews.

FlightAC1126was supposed to take off at 2:50 p.m. CST.

Instead, passengers like Damien Leewatched the drama unfold from the terminal.

"For the first hour, it was really novel," said Lee, a University of Saskatchewan assistant professor headed to Toronto to hunt for a new apartment."No one's ever seen anything like this."

But after three hours people were "starting to get a little more cranky,a little less interested," he said.

Panels removed from plane

Lee noticed something was up when the bags from the previous flight were being unloaded.

A member of the ground crew was "kind ofwide-eyed; you could see that he was really surprised and not sure what to do."

Within an hour, up to 15 people were huddled outside the plane, including flight staff and members of an animal control unit, according to Lee.

Eventually some panels were taken off the plane.

At 8:27 p.m.,Lee textedCBCNews.

"The raccoon is out. Alive," he said. But it had also escaped.

Lee sent a photo of a man holding an animal carrier on the tarmac.

The unidentified man did "a lot of the work" trying to get the raccoon out, said Lee.

But, he said, "the raccoon is NOT in the kennel It ran off."

StephenMaybury, the president and CEO of the Saskatoon Airport Authority, said the incident is certainlyunusualbut not unprecedented last yearbeesdelayed aWestJetflightat the sameairport.

Lee said he has no ill will against the airline, which gave out $10 food vouchers to passengers mid-way through the wait.

"They're doing really all they can do," he said. "This is not human error, I would say."

Customers were also offered a discount on a future flight.