A passenger travelling with Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) experienced quite a surprise during her flight from Oslo, in Norway, to Malaga, in Spain, on Wednesday, 18 September. While she was opening her in-flight meal, a mouse escaped from the box, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
Rodents usually won’t be spotted mid-air. As the animals tend to chew through almost anything, banning them from flights is standard practise within the airline industry to avoid any of the plane’s hardware being damaged. Even though such incidents are extremely rare, procedures are put in place in order to make sure the animals haven’t chewed through a cable on the plane.
According to Jarle Børrestad, who sat next to the woman and was able to observe the whole spectacle, everyone remained very calm during the incident. Nonetheless, an emergency landing was carried out, making the plane touch down in Copenhagen, in Denmark, instead of Malaga.
“Believe it or not. A lady next to me here at SAS opened the food and out jumped a mouse. Now we have turned around and landed at CPH [Copenhagen Airport] for flight changes”, Børrestad wrote in a Facebook post after the landing.
The passengers thus got to prolong their voyage but after just a few hours of waiting in Copenhagen, they were all able to board another plane and complete their journey to Malaga. According to the airline, a procedure was set in motion in order to prevent anything similar from happening again in the future.
“This is something that happens extremely rarely. We have established procedures for such situations, which also include a review with our suppliers to ensure this does not happen again”, Scandinavian Airlines spokesperson Oystein Schmidt said.
While rare, it is not the first time rodents have caused havoc on planes or other means of transportation. A British Airlines flight in 2017 didn’t even get to take off after a rodent was spotted onboard, costing the airline around 250,000 pounds, according to The Guardian. And just last week, a train in Great Britain was halted halfway after two squirrels decided to hop on and one refused to leave after multiple attmpts to get it off.
