In this photo released by The Snake Hunter, snake handler Mark Pelley lifts a a 2-foot green tree snake in the cargo hold of a plane at Melbourne Airport, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. The Snake Hunter via AP

An Australian domestic flight was delayed for two hours after a stowaway snake was found in the plane's cargo hold, officials said on Wednesday.

The snake was found on Tuesday as passengers were boarding Virgin Australia Flight VA337 at Melbourne Airport bound for Brisbane, according to snake catcher Mark Pelley.

The snake turned out to be a harmless 2-foot green tree snake. But Pelly said he thought it could be venomous when he approached it in the darkened hold.

"It wasn't until after I caught the snake that I realized that it wasn't venomous. Until that point, it looked very dangerous to me," Pelley said.

Most of the world's most venomous snakes are native to Australia.

When Pelley entered the cargo hold, the snake was half hidden behind a panel and could have disappeared deeper into the plane.

Pelley said he told an aircraft engineer and airline staff that they would have to evacuate the aircraft if the snake disappeared inside the plane.

"I said to them if I don't get this in one shot, it's going to sneak through the panels and you're going to have to evacuate the plane because at that stage I did not know what kind of snake it was," Pelley said.

"But thankfully, I got it on the first try and captured it," Pelley added. "If I didn't get it that first time, the engineers and I would be pulling apart a (Boeing) 737 looking for a snake still right now."

Pelley said he had taken 30 minutes to drive to the airport and was then delayed by security before he could reach the airliner.

An airline official said the flight was delayed around two hours.

Because the snake is native to the Brisbane region, Pelley suspects it came aboard inside a passenger's luggage and escaped during the two-hour flight from Brisbane to Melbourne.

For quarantine reasons, the snake can't be returned to the wild.

The snake, which is a protected species, has been given to a Melbourne veterinarian to find a home with a licensed snake keeper.

According to the Department of Biology at Lamar University, green tree snakes can live almost anywhere there is warm brush and shrubs. They eat frogs as well as lizards, small birds and eggs.

Snakes have made cameos on Australian jetliners before. In 2013, stunned Qantas Airways passengers watched out their windows as a large python clung to a plane's wing during a two-hour flight from Australia's northeastern city of Cairns to Papua New Guinea.

Snakes have been spotted on passenger jets in other countries. In 2022, a snake was discovered on board a United Airlines passenger flight from Tampa Bay, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey. The non-venomous snake was removed from the plane by airport staff after the flight landed in Newark.

That same year, an AirAsia passenger plane was forced to divert and make an unscheduled landing after a snake was spotted slithering through the overhead lights.

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