Passengers travelling in a commercial plane got a shock of their life when they saw a huge snake slither into the cabin in a scene straight out of the Hollywood thriller “Snakes on a Plane.”
The green reptile, according to a report by Associated Press, was seen slithering out of a passenger’s bag through the overhead luggage compartment in the cabin area on an Aeromexico flight from Torreon in Mexico.
A passenger Indalecio Medina then shot the video using a mobile and posted it on YouTube.
“I was reading a magazine and the passenger next to me saw it and, ‘Oh my word!'” Medina told The Associated Press by phone Monday. He estimated it was over 3 feet (about 1 meter) in length.
Passengers hastily unbuckled themselves to get clear of the dangling snake before it dropped to the floor, where people trapped it between rows 5 and 6 with blankets provided by a flight attendant, Medina said.
“It was a frightening situation … but people remained calm because it didn’t get out of that space and nobody became hysterical,” Medina said. “Some people got up to see what kind of reptile it was, but nobody got carried away.”
After the pilot radioed ahead, the plane was given priority landing in Mexico City and touched down 10 minutes later. Passengers exited out the rear, and animal control workers came on board to take the stowaway into custody.
The airlines has launched an investigation as to how the snake got into the cabin and would take measures to keep such an incident from happening again.
“Snakes on a Plane” was a 2006 action movie starring Samuel L Jackson.
(Inputs from AP)