After a wild night here at JFK we are looking at taxi times of over 1 1/4 due to 4L CLOSED due to several pilots reporting turtles on the runway.. Only at JFK !!!

This isn't anything out of the ordinary. JFK's land is abundant with wildlife ranging from turtles, fox, jack rabbits, frogs, possum, raccoon, cranes, ducks, geese, and other species indigenous to wetlands. I've been out there many times and have seen large jack rabbits sprint across active runways. Port will send out their wildlife folks who will safely remove the turtles back to the swamp.

LOLz: http://nycaviation.com/2009/07/08/jfk-r ... o-turtles/

RWY 4L/22R was never closed. There were turtkes on the RWY but they were being removed by PA Wildlife staff. This was causing some minor delays to departing traffic. The ATCT decided to use the 31s to minimize delay but that move may have backfired since there were too many aircrafts in the line up for 4L and it took a while to switch everything to the 31s.

Ahh, thanks for the clarification.

"Caution wake turbulence behind the departing turtle..."

Many thanks to bluejuice for the scoop! This story is now spreading around the world but it was broken right here!

USA Today picked up the story early on and linked back to us, YAY!

NY Post picked up the story this afternoon, but gave us no props. Reuters and the AP have also picked it up and it's being syndicated all over the place...i.e. Gulf Times in Qatar. Channel 2 has it on their website as well, I'd imagine we'll see it in most of the local media outlets.

Some new details...

A departing plane did indeed run over some turtles around 9:30am.

Port picked up 78 diamondback terrapins and released them away from the airport.

Gothamist picked up the article as well, with nice props: http://gothamist.com/2009/07/08/turtle_ ... runway.php

What brought them out? Alll the heavy rain from yesterday?

A Port spokesman said it is mating season.

Oh that would definitely do it. Headline should read "Horny Turtles Delay Flights".

Fear the Turtle!