Live mouse in passenger’s meal forces Spain-bound flight to make unscheduled landing

Airlines usually strictly prohibit rodents on board because the animals can chew through electrical wiring, key to the operation of a plane.

‘Believe it or not. A lady next to me … opened her food and a mouse jumped out,’ wrote one passenger, Jarle Borrestad, on his Facebook page, along with a photo showing him smiling next to two other women, also smiling.

Borrestad told the BBC that the rodent made its debut ‘from the box of food that the woman sat next to him on the flight was opening’.

Borrestad told the news outlet that the situation was very calm and that people ‘were not stressed at all’. Nevertheless, he also admitted to the BBC that he put his socks over his trousers so the mouse would not crawl up his legs. 

A spokesman for SAS, Oystein Schmidt, said that ‘in line with our procedures, there was a change of aircraft’ and the passengers were flown to Malaga on another flight.

‘This is something that happens extremely rarely,’ he said of the incident.

‘We have established procedures for such situations, which also include a review with our suppliers to ensure this does not happen again,’ he said.

According to protocol and procedures, the plane had to make the diversion for an ‘inspection and fumigation’ process and to transport the passengers onboard to another aircraft.

‘In these cases, we have very clear procedures to follow, including full inspection of the aircraft and of all our suppliers’ processes to see what needs to be improved or changed in order to avoid scenarios like these in the future,’ SAS said.