Robot Passenger Delays Southwest Flight

A not-quite-human passenger managed to hold up a Southwest flight in California for more than an hour Thursday, UPI reports. The culprit: a 4-foot-tall, 70-pound robot named Bebop, whose owner, Eily Ben-Abraham of Elite Event Robotics, had bought it its own seat on a flight from Oakland to San Diego. The trouble started when crew flagged the humanoid robot in an aisle seat as a violation of the airline's rules for large carry-ons, forcing a move to the window. That wasn't the end of it. Staff then questioned the robot's power source and discovered its lithium battery exceeded Southwest's size limit, Ben-Abraham told KGO-TV. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the pilot came on the intercom to announce that an "unusual passenger," coupled with airport traffic in San Diego, was the cause of the delay.

The plane was cleared to depart only after the battery was removed and confiscated, leaving Bebop to fly "inert" and the flight to leave 62 minutes late. Elite Event Robotics, which rents out humanoid robots to events for $500 per hour or more, says the robot will keep flying commercially—but without its batteries, which will be shipped separately. Overnighted power packs helped Bebop make a scheduled appearance at a medical conference in Chicago on Sunday.