Snake on plane make passengers panic onboard United Airlines

No, we are not talking about the movie Snakes on a Plane which was a 2006 American action film directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. This is the real deal.

A Snake on the plane just got real for passengers aboard a United Airlines flight as they discovered a snake aboard the aircraft. Passengers onboard United Airlines flight 2038 were shocked to see a snake on a plane which resulted in a lot of panic at the end of a flight from Florida’s Tampa city (TPA/KTPA) to New York (EWR/KEWR). The officials were called to catch the reptile. The Boeing 737 registered N27252 had landed only a few minutes before the snake was discovered on the flight. The snake was found while the aircraft was taxiing to the gate. None of the passengers were injured and no delays in operations were reported.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement that the airport’s wildlife operations staff and Port Authority Police Department officers met United Flight 2038 at the gate and removed the "garter snake" and later on released it into the wild, according to The Washington Post. The statement further added that no one was injured, and operations were not affected.

(Garter snake is a common name for generally harmless, small to medium-sized snakes belonging to the genus Thamnophis in the family Colubridae. Native to North and Central America, species in the genus Thamnophis can be found from the subarctic plains of Canada to Costa Rica.)

In a statement, United said passengers alerted the crew to the snake, and the airline "called the appropriate authorities to take care of the situation." The Washington Times reported citing local media of New Jersey, News 12 New Jersey, that the passengers flying in business class spotted the snake while the plane was taxiing after landing. Passengers started shrieking and pulling up their feet, according to the TV station.

After the snake was removed, passengers deplaned with their baggage, and the plane was searched for any other reptiles crawling aboard and found none.

In February this year, a similar incident took place on an AirAsia flight in Malaysia when the passengers found a snake while the plane was in the air. The viral Tik Tok video from the flight showed that the reptile was inside a light fixture above passengers. Meanwhile, in 2016, a large snake -- believed to be a venomous green viper -- emerged from an overhead compartment on an Aeromexico flight in Mexico, according to The Washington Post. A passenger`s video posted on Twitter shows the creature hanging from the ceiling of the plane, which received priority landing clearance when it reached Mexico City.