Airline passengers flying from and to JFK Airport faced some delays when dozens of turtles decided to leave Jamaica Bay and take to the runways. Why? To lay eggs on the other side. 
 
 On Friday afternoon, flights had to wait for the diamondback terrapins to do their thing. One person Tweeted, "Im taxiing in my plane because there are turtles on the runway. Perhaps the only excuse I have ever found endearing," while another described, "My @AmericanAir flight into JFK is apparently delayed due to dozens of turtles crawling out of the bay onto the airfield." 
 
 Apparently there are TURTLES on the runway at JFK causing our delay to deplane 😂🐢 — sarah mcc (@unsarah) July 7, 2017 
 
 My flight has been delayed on JFK because of turtle crossing. I guess Ninja Turtles have arrived in New York — Mostafa Salah (@Mooose22) July 8, 2017 
 
 A Port Authority spokesperson told the Daily News, "There were planes briefly stuck in queue,. It is turtle season here, but it was a little unusual to get the turtles at this time." 
 
 This part of the turtles' mating ritual has been happening for years. "Rather than lay their eggs in peace on a quiet beach as the hard-shelled creatures in other parts of the world do, these New York turtles opt for the sand that lines the airport perimeter," DNAinfo explained last year. The Jamaica Bay Terrapin Research group tried to get down to the bottom of the phenomenon: 
 
 Where did all these terrapins come from? Like many major airports, JFK has a full-time team of wildlife biologists who have traditionally focused their attention on bird and mammal hazards to aircraft safety. Trained people were in the right place at the right time to have seen terrapins on land in large numbers in the years before the 2009 eruption, and their failure to see many terrapins probably means the number of terrapins in those days was small. JFK wildlife biologists have marked 2,426 terrapins so far, scanned each one first for our microchips and have found none. We have not detected a decline in the Rulers Bar population. Also, the airport is about 2.8 miles east of Rulers Bar, which is farther than terrapins normally roam. Finally, the airport terrapin population might have grown tremendously in the last 10 years, perhaps due to a drop in egg predation by their main nest predator, raccoons. This is the most likely explanation, although we do not know why the raccoon population would have decreased then. 
 
 In 2013, the Port Authority installed plastic tubing to act as a barrier, leading to a nearly 50% drop in turtles on the airfield. But it turns out those barriers are underwater during high tide... ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — Some flights at New York's Kennedy Airport were briefly delayed, but not by passengers of equipment malfunctions. It was turtles. 
 
 The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says about 40 diamondback terrapins crawled out of Jamaica Bay and onto the airfield at about 4:45 p.m. Friday. 
 
 Authority spokeswoman Cheryl Albiez tells the Daily News that some planes "were briefly stuck in queue" while the turtles were being rounded up. 
 
 The turtles' annual migration takes place from June to mid-July. 
 
 Port Authority wildlife specialists collect the animals that wander too close to the runway and release them to safer areas. ||||| NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Shane McMahon, the son of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Vince McMahon, was one of two people rescued Wednesday when their small helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in the water about half a mile off Gilgo Beach in Babylon. 
 
 The Robinson R44II-type helicopter, which is registered to a company in White Plains, was en route to Westhampton when it went down around 10:30 a.m. after taking off from Westchester County Airport. 
 
 The chopper issued a Mayday call prior to going down. A commercial flight headed to John F. Kennedy Airport heard the call and relayed it to controllers. 
 
 “Everything happened so quickly, you don’t have much time to react,” McMahon told 1010 WINS’ Al Jones. “It was very unnerving.” 
 
 McMahon said he heard a bang and then his pilot told him they were going to land in the water. 
 
 As CBS2’s Emily Smith reported, as the helicopter lost power, they inflated the pontoons and made a hard landing on the ocean. 
 
 “It is very unsettling when all of a sudden you have something happen. You hear a bang and saying you are going to do an emergency landing in the water, so yes very unnerving,” he said. 
 
 As CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan reported, McMahon congratulated the pilot he had hired to chopper him from Manhattan to Westhampton — for skill and calm under duress, calling a mayday above ocean waters off Gilgo beach as they lost power, before banking down into a hard landing. 
 
 “[He] was super calm, which made me super calm and we landed perfectly,” McMahon said. 
 
 The fortunate outcome was unexpected. 
 
 “We heard some noise, and it became very clear to me that I could no longer continue to fly the helicopter, so I decided to make an auto-rotational landing on the water,” Mario Regtien said. 
 
 The helicopter went down about 2,000 feet from a lifeguard stand, where two lifeguards jumped into kayaks to help before the U.S. Coast Guard arrived. 
 
 “We ran up and got kayaks and we paddled out, a short trip out there. Those guys actually handled it really well, the two gentlemen in the helicopter, actually really calm and collected,” lifeguard Zach Viverito told CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan. “We put them on the kayaks and just swam along with them until the Coast Guard met us about halfway in.” 
 
 “We were just getting to work and we saw a helicopter go down pretty hard, saw a big splash,” lifeguard Don Dobbi said. “We ran up and grabbed the kayaks and paddled out to see what was going on, we knew it was out of the ordinary.” 
 
 I'd like to thank the man upstairs for looking out this morning & thanks to pilot Mario, Suffolk Co. Marine Bureau & Fire Island Coast Guard — Shane McMahon (@shanemcmahon) July 19, 2017 
 
 McMahon gave a “big kudos” to the lifeguards. 
 
 “Everybody chipped in, it was great,” he said. 
 
 The helicopter could be seen floating on pontoons on the water following the emergency landing. Suffolk County police said the two men were wearing life jackets and were uninjured. They were then picked up and brought to shore by a police department Marine Bureau vessel. 
 
 When asked if they were the heroes of the day, Viverito said, “I don’t know about that.” 
 
 “That is what we are here for,” he said. “So just kind of training, get on the equipment and go right out there.” 
 
 The Coast Guard responded to remove the aircraft, police said. 
 
 Great Job by NYPD Aviation & SCUBA with assisting in the rescue of two people from a Helicopter accident in v/o Tobay Beach in Nassau County pic.twitter.com/nREf3mWz7p — NYPD Special Ops (@NYPDSpecialops) July 19, 2017 
 
 The NYPD also assisted in the rescue.
– Bird strikes at New York City-area airports have been known to cause emergency landings, but a different type of creature kept some planes from even taking off this week, the AP reports. As part of their annual migration ritual, about 40 diamondback terrapin turtles emerged from Jamaica Bay Friday afternoon and creeped onto the runways at JFK International Airport in Queens, causing some flight holdups, per the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "There were planes briefly stuck in [the] queue," a Port Authority spokeswoman tells the New York Daily News, adding that although it's turtle mating season, the event "was a little unusual." Experts told DNAinfo last year that although turtles typically head to the beach to lay their eggs, NYC turtles seem to like the sand that surrounds this particular airport. Officials say that when pilots spot a turtle in their taxiing path, they'll either hang out until the turtle moves on or have airport staff move the turtle from harm's way. Gothamist rounded up some passenger reaction to Friday's event, with one commenter calling it "perhaps the only excuse I have ever found endearing." (At least the turtles didn't fall out of this guy's pants.)