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One small mouse caused a five hour delay on a flight from Norway to the US.  

Norwegian Air Shuttle, already plagued by costly flight delays on its long-haul routes, was forced to delay the flight on Tuesday thanks to a hunt for a mouse inside the cockpit.

'The pilots discovered a mouse on flight deck,' said Charlotte Holmbergh, a spokesperson for the airline. 'We had to make sure that no cables or wires had been chewed.'

Mouse hunt: The rodent was spotted just before take off and caused the flight to be severely delayed

'This does not happen very often, but it does happen from time to time.' 

The incident took place aboard one of Norwegian's new Dreamliner airplanes. According to Romerikes Blad, a local Norwegian paper, the mouse was spotted while the plane was preparing to take off.

Staff then frantically began to search the cabin for the rodent but the flight only took off from Oslo Gardermoen for JFK airport in New York after 11pm, five hours after it was scheduled to.

While that might sound like an inordinate amount of time for one small rodent, Holmbergh explained, 'In such situations, a pest control company must board the plane. The mouse needs to be found and then removed.'

Spot of bother: The Airline has suffered a string of delays and technical troubles on Boeing 787 Dreamliners

Norwegian has been expanding rapidly with new bases around Europe in Britain and Spain.

This summer the airline began flying the competitive flight path between London and New York, and last year became the only European budget carrier to fly long-haul routes.

Unfortunately, a string of technical troubles with its new BOEING 787 Dreamliners delayed many of its flights, leaving passengers stranded at airports from Bangkok to Florida.

The airline has since improved its reliability.

'At least the mouse was caught,' Holmbergh added.