Noosa News
Invasive keyhole wasp builds nests in aircraft instruments, may pose ‘significant risk’ to air safety

You’d probably shoo it away without a second thought, but a wasp that’s recently called Australia home can pose a “significant risk” to passenger aircraft safety in Brisbane and beyond, research finds.
Key points:
- An experiment showed a particular species of wasp made nests in instruments that measure air speed
- The nests of the culprit, the invasive species Pachodynerus nasidens, can block instruments in a matter of minutes
- Brisbane airport and some airlines are mitigating the risk, but the wasps could spread much further afield
The study, published in the journal PLOS One today, came off the back of a series of incidents at Brisbane airport where wasp nests, constructed in an aircraft’s speedometer, forced planes to abandon take-off or even…
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