Horses are surprisingly frequent fliers - rough estimates put the number at somewhere around 30,000 equine flights annually.
The best race horses and competition horses typically compete literally all over the world during their career. Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, born and bred here in Lexington, and retired to stud at Coolmore in Versailles, KY, arrived in Japan a few days ago for the 2026 breeding season there. He’ll be back in the Bluegrass next July.
And in a country as vast as the USA it’s not unusual for horses to fly from coast to coast or take a jet to a race or show rather than endure a lengthy trailer ride. Tim Dutta, who founded the equine airline Dutta Corporation says his company handles about 1200 domestic horse flights each year, with mostly show horses on board.
FedEx, which has 28 MD-11s in it’s fleet, handles all US based horse flights exclusively. Only FedEx has a domestic animal carrier license, and a large portion of those flights are usually on the now grounded MD-11s.
“I work for Horse America. I also fly around with the horses myself”
Angela Cornes is logistics manager at Horse America, a Lexington based company that arranges flights for horses domestically and internationally.
“[The horses] go on a special container, it looks much like a horse trailer inside, but it is a pallet container, and they do fit on a couple of different type of aircraft. The problem is, is with that huge number of aircraft out of service, Now all the packages have to go onto other aircraft, and other aircraft have to... There is a lot of routes that aren't covered, or they're having to scramble to get those routes covered because of those MDs being out of service.”
Horses take a back seat, no pun intended, to packages and overnight mail during the Holiday season each year. FedEx normally embargoes horse flights from about mid December to mid January, but the MD-11s have been grounded since November 7th and there’s no telling when they might be allowed back in the air. Angela Cornes…
“So we don't typically get back started, obviously, until after the holidays on a normal year. It just is going to depend on how quick FedEx can get their MD-11s inspected and fixed and back up in the air and get their routes straightened back out.”
With the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida - a mecca for elite show horses and riders every winter - starting on December 31st, Dutta tells me he has come up with a contingency plan, “We have chartered a 747 aircraft from Atlas to move about 65 horses from LAX to Miami in Dec 15 for our clients”, adding, “We hope by mid January that the MD-11 will be flying again, and the busy season over for Fedex.”
