Imagine finding an uninvited four-legged rodent as a passenger on board your plane. That’s exactly what happened on a Scandinavian Airlines flight. The flight had to make an emergency landing after a mouse booked a flight from Oslo, Norway to Malaga, Spain.
On Wednesday, the flight bound for Spain was forced to make an emergency landing in Copenhagen, Denmark, after the furry traveler was spotted, the BBC reported.
According to protocol and procedure, the plane had to be diverted because the rodent posed “a safety risk,” Øystein Schmidt, a spokesman for Scandinavian Airlines, told AFP news agency.
“This happens extremely rarely,” Schmidt told the news agency. “We have established procedures for such situations, which also include checking with our suppliers to ensure that something like this does not happen again.”
After landing in Denmark, the furry plane reached its departure airport while the other passengers continued their journey to Spain, the BBC reported.
USA TODAY has contacted Scandinavian Airlines for comment.
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Jarle Borrestad, a passenger on the flight to Málaga, Spain, reported the rodent’s route to the BBC on board the plane.
Borrestad told the news agency that the rodent “came out of the food box that the woman sitting next to him on the plane was opening.”
Borrestad told the news channel that the situation was very calm and people were “not stressed at all”.
He even joked about the incident in a Facebook post full of laughing emojis.
“Believe it or not, a lady next to me here at SAS Plus opened the food and a mouse jumped out,” the post said. “Now we have turned around and landed in CPH due to flight changes.”
However, Borrestad admitted to the BBC that he had pulled his socks over his trousers to prevent the mouse from crawling up his legs.
Ahjané Forbes is a reporter on USA TODAY’s National Trending Team. Ahjané covers breaking news, auto recalls, crime, health, lottery and public policy. Email her at [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram, Threads and X (Twitter) @forbesfineest.
