I follow a bunch of aviation info on YouTube. This one is interesting. Unfortunately I do not know what ultimately happened to the horse. The plane had to dump 20 tons of fuel to return to JFK and still landed heavy which is why he overshot the taxiway that air traffic control instructed him turn onto. The plane was going to Leige, Belgium so I imagine a load of sport horses?
Wow. I have to say that pilot sounded remarkably calm for somebody who had a loose horse moving around in his plane. Which I guess is probably just as well under the circumstances.
Given the date and the destination, my first thought would be that maybe it was a load of jumpers going back to Europe after competing at indoors. But that’s just a guess.
I hope the horse was OK. Given the crates they usually fly them in, I sort of can’t imagine how he managed to get out of it. They are usually very much contained. But… horses.
This right here.
Horse escaped his cozy box with hay, and apparently didn’t cooperate with recapture and reloading – if that was a possibility.
Horse made a plane turn around and go back to origination, caused a fuel dump, made a lot of other horses stay on the plane much longer than planned, probably messed up the logistics as well as the time schedule of caretakers and other support people, not to mention the pilots and crew scheduling for other flights, and all were late to their destination by probably at least several hours.
Just another day of a horse being a horse, really.
One of the responses on the YouTube piece was that the fuel, additional landing and ramp fees was probably close to $30,000 
. It was a Boeing 747…not a small plane. I don’t know who pays for that but safety first!
Susan
It was interesting listening to the pilot and the tower. I did hear the pilot ask for a veterinarian. I hope the horse is ok. Sounds like the pilot was fabulous.
Is there an extra fee for your horse being an expensive pain in the ass?
This is what the crates look like that I’m familiar with for flying horses. They are pretty darn boxed in. And they will usually put either two or three horses in one of these crates, depending on how much room each horse needs.
But maybe they were using a different shipping system. I’ve seen pictures of polo horses on planes that looked very different, for example.
I’m very, very glad I am not an international rider. I don’t think I could handle it.
There certainly should be!
The prices for this are actually per pallet. So you could put one, two, or three horses in it, depending on how much space your horse needs. Similar to the difference in flying coach, comfort plus, or first class.
Or you can put a horse on one side and equipment on the other, or whatever.
Do grooms still ride in Cargo with the horses?
Trainer friend did this - Germany to US - back in the 80s & rode in a jumpseat with the horses.
He mentioned a boltgun being required equipment onboard, to euth any horse that posed a risk.
Pilot friend (licensed for jets) told me uncontained, shifting weight can cause a crash.
If that’s still the case, that pilot did sound pretty calm! 
Wasn’t there an Olympic horse euthanized in the air, because he was fractious and they could not get him to calm down?
Recreated in the film “International Velvet” and also in a Dick Francis novel (it wasn’t an event horse in the Dick Francis novel), but Francis interviewed a lot of the people who worked for Pegasus Air Transport as research for the novel.
As I understand it, horse shipment by air has changed radically since the 80’s.
A main change is that, today, the boxes that are supposed to contain the animal no matter what.
Per the Francis novel and other information, in the early days horses weren’t well contained. They could end up thrashing around the airplane, flinging their 1000+ lbs selves from side to side, etc. Imagine turbulence that far exceeded a bumpy trailer ride upsetting the horse, or a horse just not coping with techniques to relieve pressure in their ears.
I suppose escaping the box shouldn’t be possible now. But this one horse did.
We really don’t know what happened. To be honest I do wonder if human agency was involved, if someone either mistakenly or on purpose thought they could open up the box for some reason. Maybe saw something wrong and thought they could fix it, maybe horse was colicking, trying to lay down – horse lunges for opening – but zero idea, just speculation.
"We are a cargo plane; we have a live animal… a horse onboard the airplane,” one of the pilots explains. “The horse managed to escape his stall. We don’t have a problem flying-wise, but we need to return back to New York; we cannot get the horse back secured”.
Although the pilot said “escape his stall”, that isn’t necessarily what happened. The pilot was just quickly communicating the current situation of a loose horse. With no time to waste explaining what happened.
Also the pilots may not have gone to view the situation themselves if they to both needed stay on point flying the plane with a 1,000 lb animal roaming loose.
If anyone can find out more details, they would be very interesting and even educational. I wonder what the guidance is for a situation that a horse loaded in an airplane box, on a plane in flight, appears to be seriously colicking.
This is the only information I found about it.
It was a 747…Queen of the skies. https://www.jetphotos.com/showphotos.php?keywords-contain=0&keywords-type=reg&keywords=TF-AMM&search-type=Advanced&sort-order=0&page=2
One loose horse isn’t going to jeopardize the cargo balance but certainly is a huge safety risk hence the return to JFK.
Yes, there should be 1 groom per 3 horses, or at least it was the last time I flew about 10 yrs ago. If there are a lot of horses, they can go 5 horses per groom.
During take off and landing the groom has to remain seated and buckled. It looks like the horse got out during take off.
I knew a driving horse that slipped and fell, and somehow ended up on his back and cast himself in a 2 horse abreast container. It took a lot to get the horse back on its feet. They pushed the other horse over as far as he would go, and moved the divider over. I flew with horses the next year with the same group and we only rode with 3 abreast.
When you take off, you can hear the horses slip and scramble. Its horrible, (because it echos and its metal) but it is scary. Landing is much better for the most part.
I wonder if the horse was in a container by itself or small.
What I don’t understand is besides how the horse got out, is where did it go. The cargo hold is so tightly packed. The nose of the plane has some room in it, and the horses are either in the nose or over the wings so they can get out first and put in last.
The crew at the Ark is super good about making sure everyone is safe.
Liege is where almost all horses to-from JFK transit through, so really could’ve been anything—Arabians that will connect on to Saudi, Quarter Horse reiners, pricy racehorses, or just someone’s pet. No real reason to assume they were jumpers.
Yes. In 1964, on the flight to the Tokyo Olympics, Mike Plumb’s Three Day Event horse, Markham, “went berserk” and had to be euthanized. Plumb instead rode Bold Minstrel, lent to the team by Bill Haggard. Plumb finished 15th, in spite of only having ridden the horse for 2 weeks.
Can you provide a short synopsis of the NYTimes article that is behind a fire wall paywall?
Today seems to be everyone posts NYTimes articles that are not visible to those of us who do not subscribe.
Edit to fix it so I use the correct term.
I think you mean paywall, but yes. I’m blocked as well.
Yes, I mean paywall, sorry. I will fix it.
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