After a rat was discovered aboard an Air India Ltd. plane at the Delhi airport, a spokesman for the country’s state-owned flag carrier said rodent stowaways are a “rare occurrence.”
If only that were true. In fact, rats and other pests often find their way onto jetliners in India and around the world.
With thousands of flights each day handling large quantities of food for passengers as well as baggage, rodents and insects sometimes manage to hitch a ride on food catering trucks or luggage trollies to get inside planes despite hygiene checks.
“We get requests to fumigate four or five planes each month,” said an official of India’s state-run Central Warehousing Corp., which offers pest-control services to airlines, ports, railways, shipping companies and government offices in India.
The official, who declined to be named, said Central Warehousing offers two types of pest treatment to airlines. The most common is spraying pesticides inside aircraft cabins to keep out mosquitoes, cockroaches and other insects.
“The second is fumigation and it is done only when a rat or rat droppings are spotted inside an aircraft,” he said.
Fumigating an aircraft isn’t easy. The plane needs to be isolated, sealed and then pumped full of lethal gas. After about six hours, the aircraft is ventilated to clear the toxic fumes.
The official said the fumigation procedure was carried out on the Air India Airbus A321 that had rodent issues this week. The official said he wasn’t sure whether there was one or more rats inside the plane.
An Air India official had said there was only one rat inside the Airbus A321 jet when it landed at New Delhi on a flight from the eastern metropolis of Kolkata. He denied a Times of India report that said there were “scores” of rats inside the plane.
Pests afflict all airlines. A pest-control company in Southeast Asia said his company has helped clear rats out of planes belonging to two Asian airlines. But airline companies like to keep such matters quiet, and often ask exterminators to sign confidentiality agreements, he said.
The Central Warehousing official said the company’s pest control business for Indian carriers suffered a setback after Kingfisher Airlines stopped flying in 2012 but is now optimistic that business will rebound as new airlines like AirAsia India Pvt. and Tata SIA Airlines Ltd. set up base in the country.
via Rats On Planes — A Distressingly Common Problem – India Real Time – WSJ.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 