San Diego Koalas Could Miss Flight

Two koalas that spent their summer visiting Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo on loan from the San Diego Zoo are having a hard time getting through security to fly home.

The sensitive, valuable marsupials cannot be flown in the cargo area and instead fly with the passengers, zookeeper Brian Rutledge told the Boston Globe.

American Airlines flew the pair for free from San Diego earlier this year and was to fly them home. But American is now running on a reduced schedule and cannot promise that the wide-body jets necessary to fit the crates will be available for a flight Wednesday, when the animals are scheduled for return, a spokeswoman told the newspaper.

Heightened security was also complicating the problem, the spokeswoman said. The 8-pound koalas are not ferocious, but their crates cannot be searched with them inside. The animals cannot be taken out of the crates at the airport because of the stress it would place on them and the risk they could escape.