Hedgehog on the tarmac! Air NZ plane delayed by prickly inconvenience

Hedgehog on the tarmac! Air NZ plane delayed by prickly inconvenience

It was looking a bit prickly for one Air New Zealand flight on Monday when a landing at Dunedin Airport was delayed due to a hedgehog on the runway.

The spike in the road was noticed at 2pm yesterday when the captain of flight NZ675 was guiding the plane along the tarmac.

“The captain said, ‘I’m sorry I’m going to have to make an announcement that I’ve never made before, there is a hedgehog on the runaway’,” passenger Arthur Taylor told Stuff.

“The plane came to a grinding halt … I think they were worried they would suck the bloody thing up in an engine.”

Young hedgehog (iStock/kwasny221)

Firefighters came to the rescue and removed the little friendly fella from the runway and the plane could later taxi to the terminal, Taylor said.

A spokesperson confirmed that the delay was only five minutes as the plane “waited for a hedgehog to be removed.”

“The hedgehog made if off the runway safely.”

Hedgehogs, particularly dead squashed ones, have been bit of a problem at Wellington Airport.

In 2016, an airport spokesperson told Stuff that reporting of hedgehogs was part of “best practice for reporting all wildlife events at the airport as set in our safety and security procedures.”

“Over the course of a year it would not be unusual to have a few hedgehogs walk across the runway.”

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