Passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 2038, bound for New Jersey from Tampa, Florida, were in for a small scare as a snake was discovered in the aircraft mid-flight on Monday.
However, upon being alerted of the situation by the passengers, the flight crew handled the situation immediately.
As per the airline, the snake was not venomous and it, after its arrival at New Jersey, a team of wildlife operations and the Port Authority Police Department took it away and released the reptile in the wild, NBC News reported.
The reptile stowaway, identified as a harmless garter snake, turned up on United Airlines Flight 2038 from Tampa shortly after landing Monday afternoon at Newark Liberty International Airport, Reuters reported citing the statement of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Airport animal-control officers and Port Authority police officers were at the gate when the plane arrived and removed the snake, which was later released into the wild, Port Authority spokesperson Cheryl Ann Albiez said.
There were no injuries, no impact to airport operations, and the plane later departed Newark, she said.
This incident was not the first real-life instance of a serpentine creature hitching a ride aboard a commercial jet. A large snake was found slithering through the passenger cabin of an Aeromexico (AEROMEX.MX) flight to Mexico City in 2016, and a python was spotted by passengers clinging to the airplane wing -on the outside – of a flight from Australia to Papua New Guinea in 2013.