{"id":4494,"date":"2026-05-13T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/robot-passenger-sparks-take-off-chaos-as-flight-delayed-for-over-an-hour\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T13:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:00:20","slug":"robot-passenger-sparks-take-off-chaos-as-flight-delayed-for-over-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/robot-passenger-sparks-take-off-chaos-as-flight-delayed-for-over-an-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Robot passenger sparks take-off chaos as flight delayed for over an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2026-05-13 13:00:18<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>A Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland ended up running more than an hour late after cabin crew realised one of the passengers buckled into a seat wasn\u2019t a person at all &#8211; it was a 4\u2011foot robot called Bebop.<BR><br \/>\nBebop, a 70\u2011pound creation from Elite Event Robotics, was travelling with company founder Eily Ben\u2011Abraham, who had bought the bot its own ticket like any other traveller. Things went sideways the moment staff noticed the robot had been placed in an aisle seat, which breaks Southwest\u2019s rules for bulky items and triggered an immediate reshuffle to a window spot.<BR><br \/>\nBut moving Bebop only opened the door to more questions.<BR><br \/>\nBen\u2011Abraham told KGO\u2011TV: \u201cThen they come and start asking, what kind of batteries does it have? What\u2019s going on with this? X, Y and Z. They want to see it.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\nOnce inspected, the robot\u2019s lithium battery turned out to be too large for Southwest\u2019s safety limits. <BR><br \/>\nThe only way the plane could take off was by removing and confiscating the power pack \u2014 leaving Bebop switched off and slumped in its seat for the rest of the journey.<BR><br \/>\nWith the robot officially powerless, Ben\u2011Abraham and his silent travel buddy were finally cleared to fly to San Diego, departing one hour and two minutes behind schedule.<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026-05-13 13:00:18 A Southwest Airlines flight out of Oakland ended up running more than an hour late after cabin crew realised one of the passengers buckled into a seat wasn\u2019t&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4496,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4494\/revisions\/4496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}