There has been another real-life ‘snakes on a plane’ incident which has been caught on camera in a now-viral TikTok video which was shared by a passenger onboard the AirAsia flight from Bangkok to Phuket, Thailand.
It’s not quite clear when the passengers and crew first became aware of the slithery stowaway but upon landing in Phuket, the Captain instructed everyone to remain seated.
At that point, the passenger who took the video realized there was a snake squirming around a translucent light panel above the overhead lockers. Not that the unwelcome serpent seemed to faze the flight attendants.
One calm crew member first attempted to coax the snake into an empty plastic bottle but the snake wasn’t having any of it and remained firmly in situ. Not to be outwitted, the flight attendant then managed to nudge the snake into an open trash bag using the bottle as a stick.
The TikTok video has now been viewed more than 4 million times since it was uploaded on January 16.
In February 2022, another AirAsia had a ‘snakes on a plane’ incident in incredibly similar circumstances when a snake was spotted mid-flight slithering inside the same translucent light panel during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tawau.
On that occasion, the pilots decided to divert the aircraft so that engineers could safely remove the snake before it did any damage to the plane’s wiring.
At the time AirAisa described the incident as ‘rare’ although it seems the low-cost carrier is more prone to ‘snakes on a plane’ incidents than most other airlines.
Not that ‘snakes on a plane’ are unique to Asia. In 2017, a flight attendant on a Ravn Alaska flight from Aniak to Anchorage had to grab hold of a snake that was slithering around the cabin. She calmly stuffed the snake into a carrier bag, and the flight continued on its way without any drama.
