Nantucket Sound fuel dump follows horse escape from stall on transatlantic flight
A transatlantic cargo plane flying west-southwest of Martha’s Vineyard on Nov. 9 around 4 p.m. made an emergency return to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after a horse broke loose from its stall, forcing the plane to dump 20 tons of fuel over the Vineyard region and Nantucket Sound.
The Air Atlanta Icelandic cargo plane, traveling at 31,000 feet at the time, departed from the airport about 90 minutes before the horse escaped and the crew began dumping fuel over the southwest region of Martha’s Vineyard and through Nantucket Sound for about 20 minutes, according to a flight path re-creation posted to YouTube.
“We are a cargo plane, we have live animal(s), (a) horse on board the airplane, and the horse managed to escape the stall,” the pilot said to a Boston air traffic control official during the incident. “We don't have a problem as of flying-wise, but we need to return, return back to New York, we cannot get the horse back secured.”
The plane descended to about 22,000 feet when the crew began to dump the fuel and make a turn back toward New York. The flight was scheduled to fly to Liege Airport in Belgium.
Martha’s Vineyard Airport Director Geoff Freeman said dumping the fuel was done as a safety precaution because the added weight of the fuel required to make the transatlantic flight meant the plane would have been too heavy to land at that time.
“When they do offload fuel for safety concerns for returning to an airport, they usually do that away from populated areas or out over the ocean where, at that altitude, (the fuel) can be dispersed into the atmosphere,” Freeman said, adding the fuel does not pour out of the plane into the ocean because of the speed of the plane and altitude of the flight.”
Freeman said the fuel dump was “well out of our range” and did not have an impact on regional flights.
“It's not like dumping a bucket out, it's turning on a hose while you're flying 400 miles an hour,” he said.
During the course of the incident, the pilot requested a veterinarian upon their return and landed safely back in New York a short time later.
Air Atlanta Icelandic could not be reached for comment.
Walker Armstrong reports on all things Cape and Islands, primarily focusing on courts, transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jd__walker.
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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: 20 tons of jet fuel dumped over Nantucket Sound after flight mishap
