A plane flying from New York JFK to Liege, Belgium, was forced to turn around after a horse became loose in the cargo hold.
According to two people familiar with the incident, the horse, which partially fled its stall while airborne, had to be euthanized due to the severity of its injuries.
When the crew phoned Air Traffic Control in Boston to report that the horse had escaped, the freight flight operated by charter airline Air Atlanta Icelandic had risen to roughly 31,000 feet.
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"Flying-wise, we don't have a problem," one of the pilots says in a video reconstruction by the YouTube channel "You Can See ATC," but "we can't get the horse back secured."
According to a spokesperson from Air Atlanta Icelandic, the information in the "You Can See ATC" video is correct. The horse jumped as a result of the turbulence.
According to John Cuticelli, the head of the organization in charge of animal quarantine and export at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the horse was one of 15 carried to Liege, an import hub for Europe, when turbulence struck shortly after takeoff.
The horse grew frightened and jumped halfway over the stall's high front barrier, becoming entangled with his front legs on one side of the barrier and his hind legs stranded on the inside of the stall.
"The horse jumped and managed to get its two front legs over the (front) barrier and then got jammed," he said. "It's only the second time in all my years of doing this that happened." And we work with thousands of horses each year. A terrible accident, but that horse was scared."
Air Traffic Control can be heard in the tapes allowing the pilots' request to return to JFK Airport and, because the plane was too heavy, to dump 20 tons of fuel east of Nantucket.
The captain also requested that a veterinarian meet the plane when it lands because "we have a horse in difficulty."
At that moment, he continued, "we dispersed veterinary care, animal handlers, medical equipment, horse slings, a horse ambulance, everything necessary to accommodate that horse."
"We had to take the other horses out to get the equipment in to get the horse out," he said.
However, once the animal was on the ground, it was judged that its injuries were too serious for it to survive, and it was euthanized, according to Cuticelli.
