Ahmedabad: A troop of monkeys entered the operational area of Saradar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport here this morning causing delay in arrival and departure of at least two flights, Airport Director Manoj Ganjal said.

‘The troop of monkeys was noticed by the air traffic control (ATC) team which keeps a round the clock vigil at around 0945am. Our security teams immediately swung in to action and chased away the monkeys in around 10 minutes time to make the operational area (read runway) safe for landing and take off,’ the Director said.

Mr Gangal said that owing to the incident only two domestic flights (one arrival and the other departure) was affected.

‘The airport has an around 14.5 km long boundary wall and we keep a vigil all the time. The monkeys must have scaled the wall to enter the airport premises but they were noticed immediately and chased them away,’ he said.

Notably on April 19 around 10 flights to and from the airport here had suffered minor delays owing a fire in the grass beside the runway. However it was doused safely in around two hours.

DeshGujarat