Almost 200 passengers found themselves stranded at Bournemouth Airport for 11 hours after their plane turned back after flying into a swarm of bees.
The Palmair Boeing 737, bound for Faro in Portugal, took off from Bournemouth at 0810 BST on Thursday.
But after flying into the swarm the pilot experienced an engine surge an hour later and returned the aircraft to the UK for checks.
Engineers ruled it was unsafe to fly and another plane took off at 1915 BST.
Ingested bees
A total of 196 passengers were affected including 90 attempting to travel to the Algarve and a further 106 waiting to return to the UK.
The incident happened just two days after a swarm of 20,000 bees descended on Bournemouth Pier.
It is believed the plane's engines ingested the bees while flying over Bournemouth but this did not cause problems until later into the flight.
The passengers from Faro arrived back in Britain at 0120 BST.
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