Airplane has to make emergency landing after live mouse climbs out of in-flight meal

A flight from Norway to Spain had to make an emergency landing in Denmark after a mouse escaped from the in-flight meal served to a passenger.

The Scandinavian Airlines flight was from Oslo, Norway, to Malaga, Spain, CBS News partner BBC News reported.

Passenger Jarle Borrestad told the BBC that he was sitting next to the woman whose food contained the mouse. When she opened the food packet, the mouse scurried out, he said.

He stressed that he had pulled his socks over his trousers to prevent the mouse from crawling up, but that the people had remained very calm and “weren’t stressed at all”.

Airline spokesman Oystein Schmidt told AFP that the emergency landing in Copenhagen, Denmark, was in line with company policy as mice and other rodents can pose a safety risk. Airlines usually have strict restrictions on rodents on board as they can chew through electrical wiring, the BBC reported.

“This is something that happens extremely rarely,” Schmidt told AFP.

Schmidt also said that the suppliers of the in-flight meals would be checked “to ensure that something like this does not happen again.”

The passengers were transferred to another plane to continue their journey to Spain. Borrestad told the BBC that the delay had only added a few hours to the journey.