MELBOURNE: 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 60-centimeter (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.
Snake on a plane delays a flight in Australia
https://arab.news/vswhn
Snake on a plane delays a flight in Australia
Second doctor in Matthew Perry overdose case sentenced to home confinement
- Dr. Mark Chavez, 55, a onetime San Diego-based physician, pleaded guilty in federal court in October
- Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett also sentenced Chavez to 300 hours of community service
LOS ANGELES: A second California doctor was sentenced on Tuesday to eight months of home confinement for illegally supplying “Friends” star Matthew Perry with ketamine, the powerful sedative that caused the actor’s fatal drug overdose in a hot tub in 2023.
Dr. Mark Chavez, 55, a onetime San Diego-based physician, pleaded guilty in federal court in October to a single felony count of conspiracy to distribute the prescription anesthetic and surrendered his medical license in November.
Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett also sentenced Chavez to 300 hours of community service. As part of his plea agreement, Chavez admitted to selling ketamine to another physician Dr. Salvador Plasencia, 44, who in turn supplied the drug to Perry, though not the dose that ultimately killed the performer. Plasencia, who pleaded guilty to four counts of unlawful drug distribution, was sentenced earlier this month to 2 1/2 years behind bars.
He and Chavez were the first two of five people convicted in connection with Perry’s ketamine-induced death to be sent off to prison.
The three others scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks — Jasveen Sangha, 42, a drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen;” a go-between dealer Erik Fleming, 56; and Perry’s former personal assistant, Iwamasa, 60.
Sangha admitted to supplying the ketamine dose that killed Perry, and Iwamasa acknowledged injecting Perry with it. It was Iwamasa who later found Perry, aged 54, face down and lifeless, in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023.
An autopsy report concluded the actor died from the acute effects of ketamine,” which combined with other factors in causing him to lose consciousness and drown.
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse, including the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s NBC television series “Friends.”
According to federal law enforcement officials, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions for treatment of depression and anxiety at a clinic where he became addicted to the drug.
When doctors there refused to increase his dosage, he turned to unscrupulous providers elsewhere willing to exploit Perry’s drug dependency as a way to make quick money, authorities said. Ketamine is a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties that is sometimes prescribed to treat depression and other psychiatric disorders. It also has seen widespread abuse as an illicit party drug.
