An Air Canada flight was grounded for several hours Wednesday morning after a cat got loose in the airplane and hid in the cockpit.

“We now have a ‘lost cat in airplane’ file that’s got one piece of paper in it after this morning,” said Peter Spurway, spokesman for the Halifax International Airport Authority.

Flight 603 from Halifax to Toronto had been scheduled to leave at 5:40 a.m. before Ripples the cat escaped from its carrier and ran into the cockpit.

The crew scoured the plane as the cat’s owner called out to her pet.

Eventually they determined that the cat had “weaseled its way down into the wiring of the cockpit,” Spurway said.

The cat was found and returned safely, but the flight remained grounded until the cockpit wiring could be checked for damage.

“The maintenance folks had to take panels off… inside the cockpit in order to get at the cat,” Spurway said. Once Ripples was removed, they had to reassemble the cockpit and ensure that no damage had been done to the wiring or hardware.

In the end, though, “there was no real damage done.”

He said despite the delay and some rescheduling, most passengers took the excitement in good humour.

“I’ve heard of animals…that travel in carriers down below…I’ve heard of them getting lost in the belly of the plane, or animals getting loose on airport property,” Spurway said.

“But this, this is the first time I’ve heard of this.”

The flight finally took off around 10 a.m. local time.

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