“The mouse was found stuck to the glue mat near the R3 door area at 6:30 am local time,” officiating head of the NAC´s Engineering Department Mukunda Prasad Joshi said quoting an email received from Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Limited (HAECO) transit check and maintenance contractor that refuels and does minor maintenance of NAC planes in Hong Kong. [break]
HAECO then notified the Port Health Organization of Hong Kong to collect the mouse, removed it from the aircraft and placed it on a box to avoid another fiasco. The mouse had escaped from the glue mat to which it was stuck for around four hours after it was found Thursday morning as HAECO waited for the health department people to arrive.
“The Port Health Organization department took the mouse to a laboratory at around 10 in the morning and subsequent tests showed that it didn´t carry any health risks for the public,” Joshi added.
The plane left Hong Kong for Kathmandu at 5:15pm local time (3:00 NST) and is scheduled to fly to Quala Lumpur, Malaysia from Kathmandu at 11:30 pm with 190 passengers.
NAC Spokesperson Raju Bahadur KC put the total loss for NAC -- whose only other Boeing is in Israel for maintenance -- due to the mouse episode at around Rs 20 million including the cost of finding the mouse in Hong Kong. HAECO will not send the invoice of the cost of finding the mouse in Hong Kong immediately but KC said NAC board would discuss whether they should ask for some sort of compensation with HAECO for letting the captured mouse escape on Thursday.
KC said NAC has learnt a lesson from this whole episode and would be vigilant from now onward. The mouse episode started after a stewardess saw a mouse jump out of a box of coffee, tea and beverages -- supplied by NAC itself -- Monday just before passengers were about to board the flight to Bangkok, Thailand.
“We have instructed the staffers involved in supplying the beverages to the planes to pay attention to hygiene and also asked them to thoroughly check boxes or any other containers before taking them into the plane,” KC stated.
The flight to Bangkok on Monday was cancelled and the plane left for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at around midnight Monday following clearance by the engineering department which said the mouse was found dead stuck to a glue trap at around 8:30 in the evening.
The plane had left for Hong Kong Tuesday noon after returning from Kuala Lumpur and another mouse was spotted in the cockpit just before it was to land at the Hong Kong International Airport Tuesday evening keeping the plane grounded till Friday.
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