Page 13 - IAV Digital Magazine #518

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
'Angry' Cat Attacks Pilot, Forcing Plane to Make Emergency Landing
By Janice Williams
A cat apparently went on a ram- page in the cock- pit of a plane that was headed to Qatar recently. The feline was so disruptive that the pilot actually decided to turn the plane around and abandoning the flight's sched- uled route, according to a report in the Sudanese news- paper Al-Sundai.
A Tarco Airlines Boeing 737 was already 30 min- utes into its flight from Khartoum, Sudan, to Qatar's capital city of Doha when the cat suddenly emerged in the cockpit, according to the February 25 report. Likely
alarmed by its unfamiliar sur- roundings and people, the cat instantly went on the offensive, attacking the pilot and resisting attempts to catch it. The whole scene led the pilot to head back to Khartoum to safe- ly remove the feline passenger. As noted by the
U.K.'s Metro, local reports character- ized the cat as "aggressive and angry."
The furry stow- away was said to be a feral feline and, according
to Al-Sundai, air- line workers believe the cat likely boarded the plane while it was parked in the
hangar overnight for cleaning. It's also possible that the cat could've crept aboard the aircraft during the pre-flight engineer check.
Believe it or not, this isn't the first time that a cat has made an unexpected appearance on a plane. Back in
July, a cat was discovered on a military plane that arrived at Bangor International Airport in Maine. The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane origi- nally took off at the Travis Air Force Base in California, and stopped in Colorado Springs before arriving in
Bangor.
It was unclear at the time how or when the cat ended up on the cargo plane, how- ever, it seemed to have enjoyed the ride and main- tained a friendly temperament when crew mem- bers discovered the gray-and- white feline hiding behind crates on the plane.
"We are calling it the 'feline recov- ery mission,'" Aimee Thibodeau, airport marketing and business development manager,
told Bangor Daily News at the time. "As far as anyone knows, this is a first for the Bangor airport."
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine