Snake on a plane: How reality is stranger than fiction | Flight delayed two hours due to passenger evacuation
This flight was delayed for a significant amount of time after a snake managed to slither its way on board.
A recent flight was delayed for around two hours after a stowaway snake was found on board the aircraft, and you get no points for guessing which country this story occurred.
The Melbourne-Brisbane Flight VA337 was halted on the ground at the airport after the snake was found without a valid ticket.
Melbourne-based herpetologist Mark Pelley was sent into the belly of the craft — with just a carbon-fibre hook and a torch — to wrangle the 60cm-long beast. At first he thought the consequences of a bite could be catastrophic, given the markings on the scales. However, on closer inspection, it turned out to be a harmless species of tree snake.
“It wasn’t until after I caught the snake that I realised that it wasn’t venomous. Until that point, it looked very dangerous to me,” Mr Pelley said.
‘We’ll have to pull the jet apart’
“I had one chance to grab it, and if it escaped past me it would have gone into the panels, and then that would have been extremely hard to catch. Snakes are very fast-moving, thin and agile.
The worry for Pelley was that the snake, initially hidden behind a panel, could escape into the cabin of the aircraft and put the (184) passengers at risk. “I said to them if I don’t get this in one shot, it’s going to sneak through the panels and you’re going to have to evacuate the plane because at that stage I did not know what kind of snake it was.” “If it gets past the inner skin we’ll have to pull the jet apart,” one baggage supervisor warned in radio traffic.
His suspicion is that it actually came on board inside a passenger’s luggage before escaping into the cargo hold. “Thankfully, I got it on the first try and captured it. If I didn’t get it that first time, the engineers and I would be pulling apart a [Boeing] 737 looking for a snake still right now.”
A domestic flight in Australia was delayed for nearly two hours after a green snake was found in the cargo hold of the plane. A snake catcher was called to remove the reptile, which turned out to be harmless. pic.twitter.com/TgY3r3OqY4
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 2, 2025
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The reptile was transferred to a secure facility in Tullamarine for health checks before being handed over to a licensed wildlife handler.
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