Dog Hit at Ahmedabad Airport During Take-Off

By Himanshu Kaushik

AHMEDABAD: Twelve dead birds and a flattened dog. Air passengers would consider themselves lucky as the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport in Ahmedabad was strewn with these carcasses on Tuesday morning after a night of heavy rains!

The luckiest of the entire lot were passengers aboard an Emirates aircraft bound for Sharjah and Dubai when the plane ran over a dog on the runway early on Tuesday morning. The incident took place when the flight was about to take off at 5.10 am. The pilot continued on course and the flight took off despite the bump.

This shocking incident in a supposedly sanitized zone led to a 30- minute delay for the next flight and the Qatar Airways plane bound for Doha had to wait till the blood-splattered runway was cleaned up. The pilot of the Doha flight refused to take off till the dead animal’s remains were cleared off the runway.

With no cleaning staff present at that early hour, Air Traffic Control called in fire tenders to flush the runway. That was not all. On Tuesday morning, ATC was surprised to find not less than 12 birds dead on the runway.

This was after an Indian flight from Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Muscat was hit a bird soon after take-off. The pilot, noticing that something had gone wrong with the affected engine, sought permission to make an emergency landing. The flight left on Tuesday evening after necessary repairs were made.

Officials at the ATC said that in the wee hours of Tuesday, Jet Airways and Spice Jet aircraft, both bound for Mumbai, had also reported bird hits. However, the hits did not cause any delays. Kites, eagles, pigeons and crows were among the casualties.

TOI made several attempts to contact PB Bhagat, airport director, but he was not available for comment.

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