A Noah’s Ark : Animals Great and Small Joining Jet Set

Flying sharks and elephants are nothing out of the ordinary for pilots of Lufthansa German Airlines, Air France or KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

And when some 260 horses have to be flown to Seoul for the Olympic Games, the airlines and pilots will take it all in stride once more.

Week in and week out Air France’s Boeing 747 jumbo cargo jets ferry polo horses between Europe and North America.

“That’s been no problem for us for a long time now,” said Air France freight expert Jean Loup Charlet.

New Noah’s Ark

Pilots of the German Cargo charter airlines are used to picking up all sorts of flying, swimming or stamping creatures all over the world at a moment’s notice.

“Sometimes we feel like we are on Noah’s Ark,” said a pilot of the Lufthansa subsidiary. For many years thousands of head of beef have been flown to northern Africa, entire truckloads of day-old chicks have been dispatched to Cairo and ponderous numbers of cows delivered to India.

On the return flight there might be a couple of elephants on board from India. Even the heaviest and largest four-legged cargo can be heaved effortlessly on board by means of hydraulic lifts.

Above all, dolphins and sharks are flown over the Atlantic or Pacific. Zoos, theme parks and large fisheries are customers for these delicate cargoes. The aquatic passengers are transported in large numbers in giant pools, often with the requirement that the water be kept in constant motion during the flight. Container loads of newly hatched fish are easier to transport.

Problems With Animals

But sometimes there are problems. Horses become nervous, a few cows can excite an entire herd, elephants demolish their crates.

Unforgotten at German Cargo is the incident more that 10 years ago aboard a Boeing 747 between Los Angeles and Amsterdam as, over Greenland, the crew was startled by a fire alarm in the cargo compartment housing four massive rhinoceroses.

The cause: One rhino had become unruly and whipped up such a storm of hay and straw in his cage that the resulting dust set off a smoke detector.

Crew members still shudder at the memory. Had the beast become even more agitated, the results could have been horrendous. On top of that, there were no tranquilizers on board for the tranquilizer gun.

Tall Tales

Every year hordes of apes are transported, many for medical purposes and laboratory research. And every year there are stories about apes that break out and show up in the cockpit to spring about on the instruments. Experienced pilots know that they are nothing more than high-altitude tall tales.

But pilots know that if the cargo hold and cockpit are not adequately separated, apes can emit some dreadful odors, and the longer the flight, the worse the smell.

In addition to cows and bulls--black-and-white Holsteins travel the most--horses are also frequent fliers.

They ranges from stud horses that are transported regularly between Europe and North America to race horses.

Lufthansa, in cooperation with veterinarians, has developed a cargo container that suits the latest veterinary psychological findings. The horse crates have non-slip floors and padded sides to protect the animals from injuries.