The eight-inch (20cm) Mandarin rat snake was discovered by staff in the
doorway of a Qantas 747 jet due to leave Sydney for Tokyo. The reptile
was spotted just before passengers began boarding.
Some 370 passengers were booked on the flight but all had to spend
Sunday night in Sydney hotels thanks to the slippery customer.
Australia's Agriculture Department said the snake, a species that grows
to an average length of 1.2 metres (4ft), had been euthanised "as exotic
reptiles of this kind can harbour pests and diseases not present in
Australia". The department said the snake had arrived aboard the jet in a
flight a day earlier from Singapore.
In January a large python hitched a ride on another Qantas flight
"The Department of Agriculture is looking into how the snake came to be
on the plane, but isn't able to speculate at this time," it said. The
mildly venomous Asian snake was about the width of a pencil and did not
pose a threat to humans, but it had the potential to cause ecological
havoc in the Australian environment if it had escaped the plane with a
mate, Canberra Reptile Zoo herpetologist Peter Child said.
A replacement flight was scheduled to leave on Monday morning for the
delayed travellers. One of the stranded passengers, Noah Harris, told
Australia's Channel 7 news: "We got a night in a nice hotel and we lose a
day of our trip to Tokyo, but what are you going to do? It's a good
story."
It is the second "snakes on a plane" drama for Qantas this year. In
January a three-metre python hitched a ride on an early morning flight
from Cairns to Papua New Guinea. The reptile was spotted trapped on the
plane's wing and did not survive the journey
Culled from SkyNews
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