I never flew on Air Misr.
But I spent all of Christmas Eve day helping to salvage provisions that had been mangled by Air Misr.
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Chicken buses! Or at least that’s what my latino friends have always called the buses with various livestock with the passengers! Which also means that I shouldn’t be surprised by chicken, err, goat planes!
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It sounds like the bus scene in the movie Romancing the Stone, which maybe was more accurate than I ever realized. That part, anyway.
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Wait’ll you see the bathrooms, if they can be called that. A filthy closet the size of one toilet, in a row of toilet closets. There might be a spot with running water to wash hands. If someone thought that was important.
Males had it easier, they could pee anywhere. Hopefully behind a bush. But oh well. It’s not like we don’t know what they are doing, with little visual cover available.
Dude, no one I know uses a bus bathroom. That’s the forbidden zone across all continents. It’s safer to hang your butt out the window than use one on a Greyhound. You gotta just hold it and wait for that gas station stop with the outdoor bathroom key that’s chained to a brick.
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Well, you know, we train international show jumpers to jump things… LOL
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It would seem to me (given the costs associated with dumping tons of fuel and the gate fees) it would be a lot cheaper to hire a vet or vet tech to travel round trip with horse shipments, and put down any animal causing trouble. Of course, there are people whose business this is who understand the logistics better than a sunday news viewer (me).
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Considering that there seems to be a shortage of vets just about everywhere, maybe that is not so easy to do these days.
Plus I would think this is a fairly rare occurrence. I’m sure it happens, but I doubt it happens very often.
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It doesn’t seem like they could have done anything in the air. My guess is they had to remove some other boxes full of horses from the plane so they could get the poor horse unstuck. Even if there was a vet onboard they wouldn’t have solved the situation. I would imagine they had to be extremely careful with the other horses in the box as well, making everything way harder than it already was.
That’s how I read the situation, anyway.
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Yeah, I gather the only way to resolve the situation was with a lift of some kind. Mounted from the ceiling, or roll-in lift equipment. They didn’t have it. Probably could not have reached the horse with it, regardless, until other horse boxes were removed to open a path.
I can’t imagine such a horror-filled situation until they could get back to the airport and unload the other horses. Hopefully the vet was able to reach the distressed horse very shortly after they landed.
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Yes, my heart aches for the poor horse stuck like that….if I understand it correctly.
Has anyone seen anything about the identity of the horse? In the thread on the HJ forum one person said it was a jumper and another person said it was a racehorse.
These pictures from a shipping company give a few more shots of what it looks like to fly with the horses, in this case to the Pan Am games.
Little late on this but most commonly used aircraft transporting livestock do not have high enough or heavily reinforced “ceilings” to mount any kind of movable lift capable of handling 1,000 + pounds. Roll in lift equipment would require storage space and secure, locking restraints- aviation has a long history of bad accidents caused by shifting cargo, especially anything with wheels. All about weight and balance or the bird won’t fly.
Over the decades I’ve been in horses, am aware of instances of horses figuring a way to get stuck on top of stall dividers or in mangers in trailers/vans. It does happen. And its ugly.
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Thanks for the extra information. That explains a lot.
That’s what they were called when I studied in Guatemala. University told us to never us public transit so I don’t know how many were inside but we saw plenty of baby pools full of chickens netted and roped to the top of busses.
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The woman I love to hate as the trustee of my father’s trust had been an airline hostess back in the day and had quite the story of transporting a load of pilgrims making the hajj. Yes, they were cooking with charcoal braziers, or trying to, down the aisles.
As well there was a problem with the airline, accommodations and provisions and she as the crew chief was delegated to go to the market, in her stewardess garb of the ‘60’s. Mini skirt, sleeveless blouse, white gloves, pill box hat and heels walking into the crowded town in the heat of the day. It was an unpleasant walk in many ways. She was rescued by a gentleman who had his chauffeur stop. This man had been educated in England and was well spoken but clearly distressed both by her appearance in this holy place and her situation . He took her to the market for a quick shop done by his chauffeur and returned her safely to her plane, the next morning he had sufficent supplies delivered to the plane to keep everyone comfortable. He asked that she please think well of his people and their kindness and generosity.
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