“Mouse jumps out of its food box”: SAS flight has to make unexpected landing after unpleasant incident

On 18 September, an SAS Airbus A320neo (registered SE-DOX) operated flight SK4683 between Oslo, Norway and Malaga, Spain, but was forced to divert to the Danish airport of Copenhagen after a passenger found a live mouse inside his meal.

Jarle Børrestad, a passenger on board commented on the extraordinary situation on Facebook: “Believe it or not. A lady next to me here at SAS Plus opened the food and out jumped a mouse. Now we have turned around and are landing at CPH for a flight change ???????????????”

SAS quickly confirmed the incident and said that a replacement aircraft (registered SE-ROR) brought the passengers to Malaga. “This is extremely rare,” says spokesman Øystein Schmidt. “We have established procedures for such situations and they include checking with suppliers to ensure that this does not happen again.”

After the initial commotion, things quickly calmed down on board, Børrestad told the BBC. According to him, there was no panic or stress among the other passengers. He did pull his socks over his trouser legs to be on the safe side, he jokes, “so that the mouse wouldn’t crawl up my legs.” They had to accept the delay due to the emergency landing.

A similar incident occurred in 2017. At that time, a mouse on board prevented a British Airways plane from taking off from London Heathrow Airport. After a delay of four hours, passengers eventually had to leave on another plane. That one mouse is said to have cost the airline around 300,000 euros.

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