A live horse was being carried with other cargo on a Boeing 747 cargo plane. But once the plane was in mid-air, the horse somehow broke free of its stall. With the flight now at risk, the pilot was eventually forced to bring the plane back to the airport.

According to the BBC, the incident happened last Thursday. The plane was flying from New York in the United States to Belgium, but after reaching 30,000 feet the horse suddenly got loose and caused chaos inside the plane.

In an air traffic control audio recording, the pilot can be heard saying there was a live animal on board, a horse, that had somehow escaped, and that they could not get the horse back into a secure position.

The Air Atlanta Icelandic pilot told ATC that the plane itself was fine; the only worry was the loose horse.

When the plane landed at John F Kennedy International Airport, the pilot asked for a vet to be brought.

The plane was forced to return to the airport about an hour and a half after take-off because of the horse. The pilot said they had to dump about 20 tonnes of fuel to keep the plane's weight right for the return.

How the horse got loose inside the plane is still not clear, but it remained very agitated even after landing.

After the incident, the plane set off again the same day and reached Liège airport on Friday morning.

Why the horse was being flown elsewhere is not known, though a common reason for such flights is horse racing.

This is not the first time an animal has got loose in the cargo hold of a plane in flight. Last August a bear caused a stir when it got loose on an Iraqi Airways flight from Dubai to Baghdad.

Citing the BBC.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.