Watch: Loose snake onboard forces flight to make emergency landing

An AirAsia flight from Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur to Tawau was forced to divert and make an unscheduled landing at Kuching, after a snake was spotted within the central cabin lighting.

A TikTok showing the snake illuminated by the cabin lighting, released by a user named E-dal Tay (@edal8808), quickly went viral. The video now has more than 2 million views and 91,900 likes.

Hana Mohsin Khan, a commercial pilot, later shared a video on Twitter showing the snake, which remained where it was until the plane was rerouted.

"Yikes! Snake on a plane! Either an escaped pet from passenger carry on/luggage or possibly climbed its way into the aircraft from the ground," wrote Hana, in a tweet dated February 12 about Air Asia Airbus A320-200, Kuala Lumpur to Tawau.

"This dude happily stayed inside the illuminated area till plane was diverted."

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"AirAsia is aware of the incident that occurred on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tawau on Thursday. As soon as the captain was notified, the plane was diverted to Kuching to be disinfected...This is a very rare incident which can occur on any aircraft from time to time," said AirAsia's Chief Security Officer Liong Tien Ling, in a statement to CNN Turk. He also added that all the passengers were completely safe and unharmed.

The snake was removed, and the cabin was disinfected at Kuching, after which the flight set off to Tawau again.

• Asia