Chaos at Dublin Airport as runaway bunnies halt planes on runway

This is the hilarious moment two bunnies were captured causing chaos at an international airport, delaying flights for the cutest reason.

The animals had not a hare in the world as they hopped around in the sun earlier this morning.

Video footage has caught two hares bouncing around Dublin Airport’s tarmac, leaving travellers in fits of laughter.

A departing plane was apparently delayed while an employee from air traffic control attempted to shoo them off the runway.

Phil, 34, who was on a flight to Munich for a work trip at around 11am told The Sun: “I had never seen anything like that before so it was quite funny”.

He said the plane was waiting to take off when “the pilot said there were bunnies on the runway.”

When he looked out his window he saw the “little rabbits were just bouncing on the tarmac”.

Meanwhile, “all the planes were sat back up along the side of the runway.”

Phil said that eventually the hares were chased away by a man before wishing the travellers bun-voyage.

The pilot first told the Lufthansa flight in German and Phil said he heard “most of the plane laugh”.

Phil added: “I did wonder if the ‘bunnies’ wanted to join us for the Germany match tomorrow night.” 

Eventually the flight took off “slightly late,” Phil claimed it was 15 mins late but flight tracking data shows it was only four minutes.

While Phil might not have seen this happen before, hares are all too common at Dublin airport and it doesn’t always end so well.

Runway verges are paradise for a hare due to the cover of the long grass and fencing which stops dogs chasing them.

According to the Irish Times, the airport has 30 hares per square kilometre but in the rest of Ireland the average is 3.19 hares per hm2.

Unfortunately, more than 340 hares have been killed by planes at the airport since 1997.

Due to an increase in strikes from 2019 onwards, Dublin Airport runs a capture and release operation to relocate the creatures.

Since it was brought in, 650 hares have been released on licence.

If catch and release isn’t possible, the animals are deterred by a pistol shot or occasionally a licensed cull.

Hare-ports aren’t a unique problem to Dublin, previously at Milan Airport a husk of hares caused flights to be suspended in 2007.

Staff and volunteers were left trying to herd the creatures off runways and they managed to capture 57.

The hare-raising escapade disrupted planes for three hours.