Fright Flight: Snake Drops Into Passenger’s Lap

Humane society officials are seeking a home for a two-foot snake that dropped out of an overhead passenger compartment during an American Airlines flight and into a passenger’s lap.

“I understand there was some consternation among some of the passengers,” American spokesman Joe Stroop said. “But it was pretty short-lived and nobody was hurt.”

The nonpoisonous water snake was smuggled aboard last Thursday by an Alaskan boy who boarded in Buffalo for the flight to Chicago, Stroop said.

The boy told an agent at the boarding gate that he wanted the snake to travel with him but was told there was no container for the reptile, Stroop said.

The boy left, then returned later and said he no longer had the snake. But the snake was somehow smuggled onto the plane and was stashed in the boy’s jacket in an overhead compartment, the spokesman said.