Unaccompanied teddy causes outrage on Cyprus-bound flight

Passengers on Cyprus Airways flight CY381 from Paris on Monday were perplexed that the pilot decided to fly to Larnaca with an unaccompanied teddy bear on board.

“I cannot understand why the pilot did not see this as a breach of security,” said a passenger who had complained about the matter before the plane took off.

The small bear was brought on board by a member of the ground staff, who asked passengers if anyone had forgotten it at the gate, but nobody claimed ownership. Instead of taking it back to the gate, the cabin crew chief decided to place it in an overhead locker.

One passenger, who spoke to the Cyprus Mail, took exception to this and complained to the head of the cabin crew, saying that having an item on board that had been left at the departure gate did not seem like good safety practice.

She informed the captain about the complaint and shortly after this he made an announcement, informing passengers that he had contacted the ground staff who had said that the teddy bear had been checked through security and it was safe for it to stay on the plane.

He assured us that it would be safe to fly without removing this item from the plane, the passenger said.

“I found it hard to believe that the captain had time to check whether the teddy had been through security in the space of a few minutes in the chaotic conditions of the Charles de Gaulle airport on a day on which the army blocked most of the airport areas for unknown reasons,” said the passenger.

“I contacted a member of crew again, to express my concern, saying that the decision to keep the teddy bear on board was irresponsible,” the passenger added. “The crew member told me that if I felt unsafe, then I had the choice to disembark, and I responded that this was ridiculous.”

He added: “She then threatened to call the captain to arrange to have me removed from the plane, but, in reality, she never gave me such an option because at that point the plane was taxiing to take off.”

Was this experience “in line with airline safety regulations, considering there was no way to verify how the teddy made it to the gate or whether it was safe to have it on board?”

The biggest absurdity, for the passenger, was the supposed willingness of the pilot and head of cabin to arrange for him to get off the plane. “This would have meant taxiing back to the gate, allowing me to disembark and removing my luggage, when it would have made much more sense, and caused much less inconvenience to the passengers, to remove the unescorted teddy bear from the plane when crew established it did not belong to any passenger.”