Rat grounds Hong Kong flight

Rats, they fought the dogs and killed the cats...

And gave Air-India passengers quite a time on Monday, delaying take-off from New Delhi by over 15 hours.

The Bombay-Delhi-Hong Kong flight was about to leave at 1040 when the pilot spotted the rodent. There he was, on board, all ready for the Chinese city and exotica...

The pilot, however, was a spoilsport who did not like stowaways one bit. He switched off the engines and refused to fly -- unless the furry passenger was given the boot.

That brought the security personnel in. They came armed with whatever they come armed with in such cases and proceeded to evacuate the intruder who, by now, had completely vanished.

After quite a struggle the security officials managed to track down -- and evacuate -- the rodent. Then followed an all-out search for similar stowaways.

By the time the operations were through it was Tuesday noon!

The plane finally took off at 1400 hours. And made it to Hong Kong safely.

UNI