Terrifying moment airline passengers discover live snake on the loose mid-flight

Travels stories are never too far away from the headlines, no matter what time of year it may be.

Heck, one passenger made world news this week after he was left stuck in an airplane toilet for the duration of a flight. Poor guy.

And on a recent Thai AirAsia flight, passengers suffered the fright of their lives as a snake slithered above their heads in the cabin. Check it out:

The journey from Bangkok to Phuket is a relatively short one in the air, but for all the passengers onboard, it wasn't short of drama.

Flyers on board the AirAsia flight on 13 January looked up on the flight to discover the reptile suspended above them on the overheard storage lockers used for small bags.

Understandably, some rushed away from underneath the snake in the fear the animal could drop and fall onto their laps.

Not a pleasant experience when all you want to do is look out of the window, eh?

The more brave bunch of passengers whipped out their phones to film the reptile, in the hope it could possibly go viral.

TikTok/@wannabnailssalon

Well, a video uploaded to TikTok by the user @wannabnailssalon has certainly experienced that, as it has close to six million views and counting on the popular video platform.

The clip shows some terrified passengers rushing out of their seats away from the snake, while others looked on in disbelief.

While all of this was happening, a member of the cabin crew can be seen attempting to usher the reptile into a plastic water bottle.

That was deemed very ambitious, so the bottle was instead used to sweep the snake into a rubbish bag.

It is not clear what happened to the snake after that and how it got onto the aircraft in the first place.

The plane was searched thoroughly after landing landed at Phuket Airport and thankfully, no other snakes were found.

Phol Poompuang, head of corporate safety of AirAsia Thailand, said in a statement that it was 'a very rare incident'.

TikTok/@wannabnailssalon

He added: "Flight attendants were notified before landing in Phuket after a passenger noticed a small snake in the overhead luggage compartment.

"AirAsia crew were well trained to handle an occurrence of this nature and relocated passengers from the area as a precautionary measure.

"As per standard procedure for an incident of this nature, the aircraft underwent a deep clean and fumigation before resuming operations. The safety and wellbeing of our guests and crew is always our top priority and at no time was the safety of guests or crew at any risk."