MUMBAI: Five flights were diverted to Ahmedabad and Pune, eight went around the Mumbai skies for 40 minutes before landing, and another 25 were delayed — all because a dog showed up on a runway of the Mumbai airport on Friday morning.
And to make matters worse, a cargo plane blocked the runway for 15 minutes after making an emergency landing, further delaying arrivals and departures.
A Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) spokesman admitted: “All the go-arounds, diversions and delays happened because of the dog and the emergency landing.”
According to MIAL, the dog was first spotted around 10.45am on the taxiway near the runway 14-32- the other runway was about to be closed for weekly maintenance at 11.15am.
“We chased the dog but it moved on to the runway,” a MIAL official said. And as the airport staff went after the dog, five flights had to encircle the Mumbai skies for more than 40 minutes before being diverted to Ahmedabad and Pune.
Jet Airways’ three flights - from Bangkok, Chennai, Bangalore - and Kingfisher’s flight from Chennai were diverted to Ahmedabad airport while Jet’s Delhi-Mumbai flight was diverted to Pune, according to the MIAL.
Rajiv Puri, a NRI from England, found it hard to believe that he couldn’t land in Mumbai for almost four hours because of a dog. Puri was on the Jet Airways’ Bangkok-Mumbai flight 9W 061.
“We were to land at 11.30am but the aircraft kept going around in the sky for 45 minutes. There was no announcement and when the passengers enquired after 40 minutes, the captain came out and said that we couldn’t land as there was a dog on the runway,” says Puri. “This is ridiculous. I was embarrassed as my guest from Microsoft was with me on the flight,” he adds.
The flight was then diverted to Ahmedabad where it landed at 2pm. But the passengers were not deplaned and were made to sit in the aircraft for another one hour.
“We were not even allowed to call our relatives who were waiting at the Mumbai airport. After refuelling, the aircraft took off for Mumbai,” Puri said. The flight landed in the city at 4.45pm.
An hour after the airport staff managed to shoo away the dog, an unscheduled cargo plane going from Fujara to Dubai made an emergency landing around 2.20pm as its weather radar had failed. “We had to close air traffic movement for another 15 minutes to remove the aircraft from the runway,” said an MIAL official. This further delayed the flights.
