Passengers waiting in Fukuoka on Monday expected a short hop south to Kagoshima. Instead, their flight was scrapped because of a passenger nobody had sold a ticket to.
Shortly before boarding, while the Japan Air Commuter aircraft was being readied for its 12:50 departure, a crew member in the cockpit noticed a small animal moving around. Staff tried to catch it and failed. With an unknown creature loose somewhere inside, possibly able to gnaw through cables, the regional carrier, which belongs to the Japan Airlines group, decided the plane would not fly. The 43 people booked on the service were offered refunds and help finding another way to travel.
The puzzle lasted about a day. Around 1 pm on Tuesday a mechanic lifted part of the cabin carpet and found the culprit hiding underneath: a snake roughly 40 centimetres long. An expert identified it as a young Japanese striped snake, a common species that is not venomous. It was captured without anyone getting hurt.
How it got on board is still unclear. The aircraft had flown into Fukuoka from Izumo in Shimane Prefecture before the incident, and the airline says it is checking both its procedures and the state of the plane. According to JAC, nothing like it had ever happened in its fleet before.
Snakes on planes are rare but not unheard of; airlines elsewhere have occasionally reported reptiles in cabins or cargo holds, usually arriving with luggage or freight. In Japan, the little striped snake will at least go down in company history as the first.
