Big things happened on November 9th this year, as Jared Leto became the first person to legally scale the Empire State Building and a horse escaped from its stall on a cargo plane leaving JFK Airport!
The Boeing 747 plane was departing from JFK Airport to head towards Leige, Belgium when it suddenly had to change course and turn around after a horse onboard broke free from the cargo hold. Apparently, it got loose just 30 minutes after takeoff.
“We are a cargo plane with a live animal, a horse, on board. The horse managed to escape its stall. There’s no issue with flying, but we need to go back to New York as we can’t resecure the horse,” said a pilot in the air traffic control audio message. In order to land, the plane had to dump 20 tons of fuel over the Atlantic to lighten the load.
There were 15 horses on the flight headed to Leige. The one that escaped had “jumped and managed to get its two front legs over the (front) barrier and then got jammed,” explained John Cuticelli, head of the corporation in charge of operating animal quarantine and export at JFK Airport. “It’s only the second time in all the years I’ve been doing this that I’ve ever seen that happen. And we do thousands of horses a year. A very unfortunate event — but that horse was spooked.”
According the air traffic control audio, the pilot requested a veterinarian be at the ready upon the plane’s return to JFK. Once the plane landed, it was discovered that the horses injuries were too severe to survive. The animal was euthanized as a result.
The plane eventually departed JFK once more and arrived in Belgium three hours later than originally expected.