[Image: TikTok / @edal8808]

2006 saw the American action film, Snakes On A Plane, where an FBI agent takes on a plane full of deadly venomous snakes.

It is all a bunch of fiction, but that doesn’t mean snakes don’t ever really hitch a ride on a plane.

It actually happens relatively often, with one such encounter forcing a pilot on a Malaysian flight to make an emergency landing.

The slithering snake was spotted by passengers aboard an AirAsia flight while it was taking a little light bath in an overhead light fixture.

You can just imagine the havoc this creature must have caused:

Snake on a plane! AirAsia flight to Tawau diverted to Kuching pic.twitter.com/aqyOexym8b

— Free Malaysia Today (@fmtoday) February 11, 2022

Nobody wants to be trapped in a small space kilometres above ground with a potentially venomous creature, although, I personally would have been quite amused.

The flight was going from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Tawau on Thursday before it put the breaks on at the Kuching Airport for decontamination.

The New York Post reported:

The airline’s chief security officer confirmed the startling incident in a statement to CNN Türk.

“As soon as the captain was notified, the plane was diverted to Kuching to be disinfected,” AirAsia’s Liong Tien Ling said.

The captain’s “appropriate action” kept passengers and crew members safe, Ling said. No one aboard the flight was ever “at any risk” and no injuries were reported, according to the report.

After the snake was taken care of, the flight once again made its way to Tawau.

There’s no way of knowing how the snake made it on board, but Ling said it can happen to any plane, confirming again that the pilot saved the day and that nobody was at risk.

That’s preferable compared to that time in 2019 when a woman found a python in her shoe during a long flight from Australia to Scotland.

No thanks.

[source:nypost]