High drama: Qantas python's flying circus
QANTAS had its own dramatic ''snakes on a plane'' episode when a three-metre python joined passengers on an early morning flight to Papua New Guinea.
But unlike Samuel L. Jackson's 2006 fictional Hollywood blockbuster in which a nest of vipers causes death and destruction on a jet, this reptile was concerned only with self-preservation.
QF191 was about 20 minutes into its 6.15am flight from Cairns to Port Moresby on Thursday when a woman pointed outside the plane and told cabin crew: ''There's a snake on the wing … There's its head and if you look closely you can see a fraction of its body.''
While some passengers scoffed in disbelief, she was correct.
Rick Shine, a snake expert at the University of Sydney, said the specimen was a ''very uncomfortable'' scrub python, the longest snake in Australia.
