by InTrieste
The Venice Marco Polo Airport shut down for an hour this Friday morning due to an unusual amount of seagulls in the airport area resulting in flights being delayed or redirected to Trieste’s airport.
Venice is renowned for canals, bridges, monuments, gondolas and apparently seagulls. The birds can snatch a meal right out of your hands or delay a flight. Years ago, Venetian authorities sprayed St. Mark’s Square with gull repellent, which apparently was not enough.
The airport announcement reads:
We inform our passengers that this morning, due to the presence of a flock of seagulls in the airport area, the airport was closed from 9.54 to 10.45 and some flights were diverted to other airports such as Treviso, Verona, Trieste and Milan.
The airport returned to normal operations at 11.20.
We apologize for the inconvenience and advise passengers to check the status of their flight on the monitors in the terminal or on the Today’s Flights page on the website.
Among the flights that were diverted there was also the one from Rome to Venice with the President of Veneto Luca Zaia on board. After flying over the post office for a few minutes, the plane with the Governor was diverted to Trieste. When the problem was discovered, says Save, the airport management company, “the usual activities necessary to guarantee full safety for passengers and operators began”.
In order to ward off the flock, “all the usual tools were used, including the acoustic deterrents – underlines Save – These are tools that respect the fauna and can guarantee safety at the same time”.
