Giuseppe Nelva
Things turned hectic on a routine afternoon flight on Monday after it landed at Newark inbound from Tampa. CNN reports that passengers in business class suddenly started screaming and pulling their feet up after a garden snake slithered among the seats, likely minding its own business.
What makes the event even more peculiar is that this happened after landing while the Boeing 737 MAX 8 registered N27252 was taxiing to the gate. This means that the passengers unknowingly flew with the slithering stowaway for over an hour and a half.
According to Port Authorities, no one was hurt, and while law enforcement had to forcibly evict the snake after arriving at the gate, airport operations were not impacted.
While garden snakes aren’t venomous, it’s very likely that passengers were reminded of the iconic 2006 action thriller “Snakes on a Plane,” starring Samuel L. Jackson.
In the movie, a crate full of actually venomous snakes is used in the attempt to bring down an airliner and prevent a witness from testifying.
Nowadays an effect similar to the desperate situation depicted in the film would be rather unlikely, considering that the flight deck of airliners is locked shut nearly at all times, and a snake would have to be blessed (or cursed) with extreme timeliness to sneak inside while the pilots are served coffee or one of them leaves for the lavatory.
That being said, if a possibly venomous snake appeared among passengers in flight instead of during the taxi phase on arrival, the pilots would definitely have to “squawk 7700” (set the code “7700” in the plane’s transponder, which signals an emergency to air traffic control) and divert to the nearest available runway as quickly as possible.
Snakes on a Plane was heavily hyped before release, but it’s widely considered a box office disappointment. It proved fairly divisive for critics, and it currently has a 58 percent aggregate score on Metacritic.
I suppose gamers will soon be able to simulate this exhilarating event on their own PCs or Xbox consoles, as Newark Liberty International Airport and the 737 MAX are both in the works for Microsoft Flight Simulator. You’ll just have to roleplay the presence of the snake on your own.
Image via Newark Airport Twitter.
