[HN Gopher] Plane forced to turn back to JFK after horse breaks ...
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       Plane forced to turn back to JFK after horse breaks loose onboard
        
       Author : austinallegro
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2023-11-15 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
        
       | killingtime74 wrote:
       | Dumped 20 tonnes of fuel, nice....
        
         | shanewilhelm wrote:
         | Pure speculation on my part, but maybe that's better for the
         | environment because it's not being burned as it's used?
        
           | coin wrote:
           | Make the airplane light for landing. Many large aircraft
           | takeoff heavier than their max landing weight.
        
         | tetromino_ wrote:
         | Well, having the plane crash and catch on fire upon attempt at
         | landing would have been substantially worse for the
         | environment.
        
       | MountainMan1312 wrote:
       | I don't see why they need to land immediately for every little
       | fist fight. Very abusive parent vibes. Like okay you made a
       | little mistake, now we have to ruin the whole day because of it;
       | i.e. "look what you made me do". Didn't anyone learn anything
       | from the failure of zero-tolerance policies in schools?
        
         | psunavy03 wrote:
         | Let me introduce you to a major terrorist incident that
         | involved using planes as guided missiles, and then you can
         | decide whether or not the aviation community takes in-flight
         | violence too seriously.
         | 
         | This is the Hacker News version of an end user going "I don't
         | get what's so hard about programming."
        
           | Cpoll wrote:
           | I'm not sure that tracks (although this entire thread has
           | nothing to do with the article). I'm having difficulty coming
           | up with a hypothetical situation involving a "fist fight"
           | that ends in a "major terrorist incident", but _only_ if the
           | plane isn 't turned around. I'd love to hear one.
           | 
           | I think the "zero tolerance" analogy may be a good one, in
           | that it absolves people on the scene from making decisions.
        
         | kermatt wrote:
         | Did you even read the title?
         | 
         |  _A horse is loose on an airplane_.
         | 
         | Loose cargo can be a serious issue for any aircraft, especially
         | when 1,000 - 2,000 pounds of it is potentially panicked and
         | independently mobile.
        
         | bastawhiz wrote:
         | You may find that it's particularly difficult to get police
         | onto the plane to arrest the people who are beating the crap
         | out of each other and take them down to the station if the
         | plane is in the air. An in-air brawl is obviously dangerous for
         | the participants, but also anyone nearby who might catch a leg
         | or elbow, or for the flight crew whose job descriptions don't
         | include physically restraining violent passengers.
        
         | vore wrote:
         | I know it's frowned upon to ask people if they read the article
         | but, uh, did you even read the headline?
        
           | tzs wrote:
           | > I know it's frowned upon to ask people if they read the
           | article but, uh, did you even read the headline?
           | 
           | Uhm...the evidence suggests that he probably read more of the
           | article than you did. :-) After talking about the horse
           | mentioned in the headline the article goes on to mention that
           | unscheduled landings are fairly common and gives some
           | examples--one of which is due to a fight breaking out.
        
         | fourteenfour wrote:
         | A horse "getting loose" at 31,000 feet is definitely an
         | emergency, what if one of the pilots had witnessed how loose
         | the horse had become?? They would probably have been stunned
         | and lost control of the aircraft immediately. Horse was also
         | described as "in difficulty" and in need of a vet - might have
         | pulled a muscle like Uncle Harold at the reception after a few
         | champagne toasts.
        
       | kashunstva wrote:
       | Guess they made the landing back at JFK from an un-"stable"
       | approach.
        
         | OnlyMortal wrote:
         | Neigh lad...
        
       | alexjplant wrote:
       | I wonder if it was a service horse [1]:
       | 
       | > Under the regulations for Title II and III of the Americans
       | with Disabilities Act (ADA) from the Department of Justice (DOJ),
       | a service animal must be a dog and no other species of animal.
       | However, there is a single exception to this rule: miniature
       | horses.
       | 
       | [1] https://northeastada.org/resource/miniature-horses-as-
       | servic...
        
         | eschneider wrote:
         | Probably not. Flying horses is definitely a thing and there are
         | regularly scheduled "horse buses" flying both ways across the
         | Atlantic each week.
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | Air travel accommodations for people with disabilities are
         | covered under the Air Carrier Access Act, not the Americans
         | with Disabilities Act. Under the ACAA, airlines do not have to
         | accommodate service horses. I do believe there was a case a
         | couple years ago, however, of an airline allowing a service
         | horse on board.
        
       | ksherlock wrote:
       | I can't find it right now, but one of my pilot books had an
       | amusing anecdote about a cargo goat that chewed through his rope.
       | 
       | A less amusing anecdote about weight and balance was this
       | improperly secured MRAP, although it also involved damaged
       | hydraulics.
       | 
       | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/15/crash-of-boein...
        
         | ksherlock wrote:
         | From the American Heritage History of Flight, page 283 or so:
         | 
         | Another Alaskan pioneer flier, Merle K. Smith, who later became
         | president of Cordova Airlines, recalls on of his own
         | experiences as a bush pilot.
         | 
         | In the old days we used to have what is now called unusual
         | cargo. We called it good paying freight then.
         | 
         | There was a homesteader who decided that he needed fresh milk.
         | So he sent to Seattle and ordered some goats. I loaded these
         | goats into one of the old planes and started up there. Well, I
         | had forgotten that goats like rope, and I had tied these goats
         | to various places in the airplane with ropes so that they
         | wouldn't get loose and annoy me or endanger the flight.
         | 
         | In about twenty minutes they had all the ropes chewed through.
         | So then I had all these goats. They'd all frolic together.
         | There must have been eight hundred pounds of goats; and they'd
         | all get in the back of the airplane and I couldn't hold the
         | nose down. They would all come up and chew on me a little bit,
         | and chew my shirt, and I'd slap them away. But I decided not to
         | do that any more, because the first time I did that, they all
         | went to the back of the airplane. It got to be kind of a
         | serious situation. By the time we got to where I could land
         | these goats they had most of the fabric eaten off the inside of
         | the airplane, and my shirt; and the seat that I was sitting on
         | was pretty well stripped of upholstery. But these little things
         | happened. If you came out all right, as in this instance --
         | well, it was funny.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-15 23:01 UTC)