A news item in the UK has had people talking and arguing. A guy chartered a plane for himself, his colleagues and about 100 animals out of Kabul, with room for about 100 extra Afghan refugees. The 2 main viewpoints can be expressed as.
1 Why are you wasting time with animals, there’s human lives to be spared!
2. This is an extra flight, the animals are going in the hold., humans can’t go in the hold, and humans will also be evacuated.
I don’t want to go into GD territory about Pen Farthing and Operation Ark, I more have a GQ question about humans in aircraft hold. Obviously humans don’t travel in the hold as a matter of course but I can’t work out the argument that they can’t, in the case where there’s a massive operation to evacuate as many of them as possible.
If it’s temperature based I’d say a human with a toasty jacket can withstand better temp than a dog with just natural fur; if it’s security, surely it’s easier to secure a human that will cooperate with its own security than to secure a scared animal which will try its best to escape.
What other reasons are there why humans can’t travel in the hold in such a situation?
I don’t know if the aircraft engines are supplying oxygen to the hold the same way they would to a passenger cabin. Also don’t know if the aircraft filters out carbon dioxide the same way either. You might suffocate in the hold.
If the hold is pressurized and heated (which it would be if it was going to haul cows), humans could live in it just fine. It might not be as well climate controlled as the cabin, so it cojld get warm or cold, but nothing that would kill animals in cargo, including people.
Airbus is even flirting with the idea of creating sleeping berths in cargo holds, but I’m sure they woild make sure they were properly insulated and such.
The cargo hold would be uncomfortable, They aren’t insulated for sound, so the noise of the engines would likely be very loud. No seat belts, etc.
I suspect the reason he can’t take humans in cargo is regulatory. The military might be able to get away with packing 650 people on the floor of a C-17, but commercial aircraft cannot legally carry people in cargo for many reasons. You’d need some sort of emergency waiver I suppose, which he likely does not have time to get.
The hold is pressurized the same as the cabin. Were it not, the large flat cabin floor, not designed to withstand pressure differences, would bow or cave.
According to this Quora discussion, the flight deck crew can control the cargo compartment temperature, and normally keep it a little on the chilly side:
We can set the temperature in the back cargo compartment (the “hold” or the “bulk” we call it) between 5 degrees Celsius and 25 degrees Celsius. The normal position for the selector is around 15 degrees Celsius. If we are notified that we carry a pet, which would normally be loaded in that hold, we will normally set the selector around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius.
The photos I’ve seen are of people crammed into military freight aircraft, which look as though there is no distinction between hold and cabin; but I’ve not seen reports of what type of plane was privately chartered for this particular exercise.
The C-17 Globemaster isn’t a “freight” aircraft, it’s a “transport” aircraft. Inanimate freight can be carried, but the cargo area can also be fitted with seating to securely (as in “with seatbelts and emergency oxygen systems”) carry up to 134 human occupants. As you’ve noted, there is no pressure compartmentalization between the flight deck and the cargo area.
I know OP didn’t want to discuss the specific case, but reporting I have seen indicated the reason he could not bring the Afghan civilians who worked with his charity is because when they tried to move them to the airport they were stopped and basically told they weren’t allowed to go. I don’t know the full details on why, if they had visa problems or et cetera. But it appeared to be his intention to get all of the charity’s staff and animals out of country, but either the Taliban or Western authorities one, didn’t approve the civilians. It was not a concern about being able to transport them in the hold or not.
Are there emergency exits in the cargo compartments that can be opened from inside? I thought once the compartments were locked from the outside, they stayed locked. Seal people in a tube they can’t get out of in an emergency, and you’ve just started the clock running on an unimaginable tragedy.
There have been a few airlines that have had areas for passengers or crew on the lower deck in the space that would otherwise be taken up by the cargo hold. PSA actually had a lounge down there on their L-1011s in the 1970s. Some other L-1011s had the galley down there, with a dumbwaiter to carry the service carts up to the main deck. On Lufthansa’s A340-600s the lavatories are down there.
The thing is, passengers weren’t allowed to be down there during takeoff and landing. Some of the reasons were already discussed, like the lack of emergency exits down there. But I also think part of the reason is that just being down in the very bottom of the plane would put passengers at greater risk in the event of a crash.
I’m thinking of the economics - surely it’s cheaper to buy new cows (or whatever) in the destination country, unless these were prize racehorses (which AFAIK is not something Afghanistan is noted for.)
Plus the prep time to secure these animals - surely you don’t just herd them into an open hold. IIRC from clips of horses being flown to the Olympics, etc. they have individual containers for each animal - wandering would be dangerous for weight and balance, and a panicky animal can do serious damage if they are heavy and have hooves - or at least could injure other animals.
This is silly! Economics hardly enters into the decision.
Surely it is economically cheaper to just buy a new pet, rather then spending a lot on veterinary care for your sick family pet. Try telling that to your spouse & kids!
It’s one thing to take Fido on the flight. It’s quite another to take so many animals that the hold is full, and human passengers are an afterthought. They can’t all be beloved pets. That’s why my question about economics. What did they do, empty the zoo? “Hey! The circus is finally leaving town” does not suggest to me that it was animals flying out…
So what was this planeload of animals supposed to be?
It was cats and dogs from an animal shelter. I guess if you put your heart and soul into an animal shelter you aren’t just going to leave them all behind.
My understanding is that this particular plane was privately chartered on behalf of the shelter organiser concerned, and that his human helpers who had been expected to fly put on that plane were for some extraneous reason prevented from accessing the airport. Whether they could have taken anyone else I don’t know, and as for whether he should have set it all up in the first place - I’m just glad I wasn’t in that situation.
Sleeping berths are not new, as one example the first DC-2’s had them, albeit in the passenger cabin. Compared to today’s tight seat spacing and people reclining their seats into my knees, I think a sleeping berth would be a great way to fly (at least until the airline makes them only 5 feet long).
I think you’re also ignoring the obvious fact that coach would consist of triple bunks, and three across so you could have to climb over 2 other people to get out, and only the mid-level bunk would have a window.
3 bunks would also mean eliminating the overhead luggage compartment and under-seat stowage, thus allowing the airline to charge for footlockers for carry-on…
Have I said too much? Should I delete this post in case airline execs read it?
I suppose the other question is what western country needs to import even more stray dogs and cats?
Yep, climbing over others would be a concern - although have you ever tried to leave a window seat to get to the restroom? (There’s a lot of movies that make fun of triple decker berths in Pullman trains - see “Some Like it Hot”.) As for windows, I suspect that they are on the way out anyway (maintenance & just making the body shell stronger) and will be replaced by individual viewscreens that will allow passengers to select camera angles.
But I am sure that we will never see a return to berths because it would be more complicated to jump down and stand up in the event of an emergency evacuation - versus simply standing up from a seat.
Oops, this is turning into a hijack - sorry about that. If you want to discuss aircraft berths we can start a new thread.