The Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port was forced to sus­pend run­way op­er­a­tion just af­ter 7 am on Wednes­day. The cause? Dogs run­ning loose.

Sev­er­al flights were ground­ed as a re­sult of the run­way clo­sure—in­clud­ing flights to To­ba­go, the US, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Ja­maica.

BW1503 de­part­ed Crown Point, To­ba­go at 7.17 am but was forced to re­turn af­ter cir­cling for over 30 min­utes over the Gulf of Paria.

That flight was on­ly able to de­part for Trinidad at 9.20 am. D51320, a DHL car­go flight in­bound from Cu­ra­cao, was al­so forced to di­vert to Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos.

Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er for the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Zo­la Joseph con­firmed the in­ci­dent, telling Guardian Me­dia the sit­u­a­tion was “quick­ly con­tained”.

Flight op­er­a­tions re­sumed just be­fore 9 am with BW1504 be­ing the first plane to de­part.

It re­mains un­clear how the dogs were able to ac­cess the run­way. But in a sub­se­quent state­ment, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go gave some more de­tails, say­ing flight op­er­a­tions re­sumed at 8.37 am at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, af­ter “two ca­nines were de­tect­ed and swift­ly re­moved from the grassy area on the west­ern pe­riph­ery of the air­port.”

The state­ment added that up­on no­ti­fi­ca­tion of the in­ci­dent, the Au­thor­i­ty’s stan­dard safe­ty pro­to­cols and emer­gency re­sponse pro­ce­dures were im­me­di­ate­ly ac­ti­vat­ed and the sit­u­a­tion was quick­ly con­tained.

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty ex­plained that “to en­sure the safe­ty of all avi­a­tion op­er­a­tors and stake­hold­ers, there was a tem­po­rary pause in all flight op­er­a­tions.”

The Au­thor­i­ty ad­vised that all flight op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued as nor­mal yes­ter­day and as­sured all stake­hold­ers that it re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing safe and se­cure avi­a­tion op­er­a­tions at the air­ports in Trinidad and To­ba­go.