Offbeat | That’s not carry-on: Loose snake slumbers on Alaska flight

Anna McConnaughy was flying to Alaska’s largest city when the announcement came over the intercom: a passenger on a previous flight had brought a pet snake on board.

The passenger had gotten off the plane. The snake had not.

“The pilot came, and said, ‘Guys, we have some loose snake on the plane, but we don’t know where it is,’” McConnaughy said yesterday.

Unlike the movie “Snakes On A Plane,” this one wasn’t venomous. Mostly, it was sleepy.

A little boy, one of seven passengers on the Ravn Alaska commuter flight Sunday from the Alaska village of Aniak to Anchorage, was climbing on his seat when he spotted the slumbering snake. It was lying partially covered by a duffel bag near the back of the plane.

“He said, ‘Oh, Mom, look at this. What’s that?’” McConnaughy said. “That’s how we figured out there was a snake sleeping in the corner.”

There was no panic. McConnaughy said. Mostly people wanted to see the snake.

A pilot came back to help, she said, leading to a short discussion with a flight attendant on how best to capture it.

“He said, ‘I’ll hold the bag, and you grab the snake,’” McConnaughy said. “Quite a gentleman.”

The flight attendant grabbed the snake by the belly and dropped it into a plastic trash bag. It spent the rest of the flight in an overhead storage bin, and the plane reached Anchorage on schedule.

Anchorage television station KTVA first reported the incident.

McConnaughy’s photos show a pale snake about 4 to 5 feet long. She said it appeared to want only to go back to sleep.