This has got to go down as one of the most ridiculous reasons for a flight cancellation ever.

A Virgin Atlantic plane known as “Beauty Queen”, an Airbus A330-300 had just made its inaugural flight from Atlanta to Manchester, England. Upon landing it was given what the airline thought was a “water cannon salute” but it wasn’t exactly what it seemed.

Instead of water hitting the plane, the “airport fire tenders clogged up its engines by spraying thick foam instead of water” according to the Daily Mail.

Did British Airways plan an impromptu foam party? Somehow I think not…

The plane was supposed to depart soon after the foamy salute took place. Due to this the plane had to be grounded and “forced to undergo a top to bottom safety check-over running to thousands of pounds by Virgin Atlantic engineers“.

The 252 passengers onboard had to deal with a 5 hour delay before finding out that their flight was in fact cancelled. They were given hotels and told that they would fly to Atlanta on a replacement flight at 9.30am the following morning.

The pilot and crew told some passengers that someone hit the wrong button, spraying foam instead of water all over the plane.

Could you imagine that a celebratory salute will now be costing the airline tens to possibly hundreds of thousand pounds?

Talk about a messy situation….

Find out more from the Daily Mail here.