Abstract Using bi-contact geometry, we define a new type of Dehn surgery on an Anosov flow with orientable weak invariant foliations. The Anosovity of the new flow is strictly connected to contact geometry and the Reeb dynamics of the defining bi-contact structure. This approach gives new insights into the properties of the flows produced by Goodman surgery and clarifies under which conditions Goodman’s construction yields an Anosov flow. Our main application gives a necessary and sufficient condition to generate a contact Anosov flow by Foulon–Hasselblatt Legendrian surgery on a geodesic flow. In particular, we show that this is possible if and only if the surgery is performed along a simple closed geodesic. As a corollary, we have that any positive skewed $\mathbb {R}$ -covered Anosov flow obtained by a single surgery on a closed orbit of a geodesic flow is orbit equivalent to a positive contact Anosov flow.