Flight passenger busted with 16 snakes in his luggage

Updated July 2, 2025, 6:26 a.m. | By East Coast Breakfast / Skyye Ndlovu

Snakes on a plane… again! Mumbai customs busts another reptile smuggling attempt.

Alright, somebody clearly didn’t learn their lesson from watching Snakes on a Plane.

Once again (and we kid you not), customs officers in India have had to deal with a real-life reptile rave mid-air.

According to The Witness, officers at Mumbai’s international airport recently stopped a passenger arriving from Thailand with 16 live snakes wriggling away in his luggage.

Yep, 16. We’re already itching just thinking about it.

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The reptiles included a variety of exotic slitherers like garter snakes, a rhino rat snake (sounds like something from a Marvel movie), and a Kenyan sand boa.

Fortunately, most of them were non-venomous, or had venom so weak it could barely take down a fly.

The passenger was, of course, arrested on the spot, and authorities say further investigations are underway.

Now, you’d think this kind of thing happens once in a blue moon, right? Nope.

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This was actually the third reptile-related bust at that airport in June alone.

Earlier that month, customs caught one traveller trying to smuggle dozens of venomous vipers.

Just days after that, another person was caught with 100 wild creatures, including lizards, sunbirds and tree-climbing possums.

Wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC has flagged this as a “very troubling” trend, pointing to the growing demand in the exotic pet trade.

In fact, over the last 3.5 years, more than 7,000 wild animals (dead and alive) have been confiscated along the Thailand-India flight route alone.

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So next time you’re annoyed by that crying baby or the dude who hogs the armrest, just be grateful there’s not a boa constrictor slithering under your seat.

For the rest of us frequent flyers, please leave the wildlife where it belongs - in the wild.

We’ve seen how the movie ends. It’s not worth it.