This is basically Indonesia’s real-life answer to Snakes on a Plane, but with a scorpion instead of a seemingly infinite number of snakes and without the over-the-top profanity of Samuel L. Jackson.
A photo showing a large scorpion crawling on an overhead bin on Lion Air flight JT-239 from the Riau capital of Pekanbaru to Jakarta yesterday has gone viral online, raising one important question again and again: How, Lion Air?
The flight departed Sultan Syarif Kasim II International Airport in Pekanbaru at 5 pm and was scheduled to land in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport at 7 pm. One passenger named Karim Taslin told Detik that the scorpion crawled out onto the overhead bin above his row after the aircraft had already landed and as passengers were collecting their cabin luggage.
“I was sitting in row 19 along with 2 other passengers, an elderly couple. Seeing the scorpion right above us, we got out from out seats and hurried to stay away,” Karim said today, adding that he took photos of the venomous insect.
“I pressed the emergency button, but got no response so I shouted for help,” he said.
Karim said chaos then ensued in the cabin, preventing Lion Air officials from quickly getting to the scorpion. Before they reached row 19, the scorpion had already crawled back into the overhead bin and has not been seen since.
Hopefully someone has managed to capture the elusive arachnid before it terrorizes passengers on the next flights.
We have reached out to Lion Air and will update this story if we get a response.
Curiously, this is not an isolated incident of an animal (besides humans) roaming free on an Indonesian plane. In 2016, passengers aboard a Garuda Indonesia flight from the Papua capital of Jayapura to Jakarta were treated to a slithery shock when they saw what appeared to be a snake crawling around the plane’s cabin. Garuda later said the reptile was captured and it turned out it was actually a lizard that had escaped from a non-regulatory cage that was being transported in the plane’s cargo.
Update: In an official statement today, Lion Air said the insect in the viral photo “resembles a spider”, not a scorpion. They said they had performed pest control on the aircraft a week before the flight but offered no explanation as to how the animal got on board, only that an “intensive investigation” is being carried out.
Furthermore, Lion Air said they haven’t been able to capture the insect, regardless of what it may actually be.
