New Delhi, September 28, 2021: Turtles on a runway will likely never rival snakes on a plane for dramatic effect, but a reptile has made headlines after an innocent wandering the runway at Japan’s second-busiest airport, delaying five planes.
The turtle, which weighs just over 2kg, was seen moving slowly along the runway at Narita International Airport near Tokyo on Friday morning, prompting a pilot preparing for take-off to don in contact with air traffic control.
Personnel removed the animal with a net and searched the 4,000-meter runway for other foreign objects, causing a 15-minute delay on five flights, according to Mainichi Shimbun.They included an All-Nippon Airways Airbus A380 whose fuselage is decorated with images of sea turtles in light and dark blue, an ornament that debuted in July last year to celebrate the airline’s service to Hawaii, where the animals are considered sacred according to the reports published in insider-voice.com.
While airport workers are sometimes asked to remove stray cats, raccoon dogs and rabbits from the runway, turtle sightings are extremely rare, Mainichi said. Narita officials believe the creature may have come from the airport’s holding pond, located about 100 meters from the runway, the newspaper added.
After ANA had to cancel its 14 weekly flights to Honolulu due to the coronavirus pandemic, the airline has been using its fleet of A380s on domestic routes. The plane in question was about to take off on a flight to the island of Okinawa, in southern Japan, when the turtle appeared.
The airline has shrugged off the disruption. “In Hawaii, sea turtles are considered to bring good luck, and we hope that this turtle that came to see the flight is a sign of a bright future,” he said in a statement.
