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Snake on a Plane Forces Flight Delay: ‘Looked Very Dangerous’

A snake catcher found the reptile half-hidden in the plane’s cargo hold.

A domestic Virgin Australia flight was delayed for two hours after a stowaway snake was discovered in the plane’s cargo hold. Snake catcher Mark Pelley found the reptile half-hidden in the dimly lit hold as passengers boarded Flight VA337 from Melbourne to Brisbane on Tuesday. “It wasn’t until after I caught the snake that I realized that it wasn’t venomous. Until that point, it looked very dangerous to me,” Pelley said. The creature turned out to be a 60-cm (2-foot) green tree snake, a non-venomous species native to the Brisbane region. Pelley said he was worried it would disappear further into the plane. He warned airline staff: “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.” He said the snake could have hitched a ride from Brisbane in a passenger’s luggage. It cannot be returned to the wild for quarantine reasons and has been handed to a veterinarian in Melbourne to be placed with a licensed snake keeper.