A flight bound for Japan was forced to suspend its flight after it was discovered to have had a hitchhiker: a snake, which had stowed away near the doorway of the airplane.

The snake was found by the doorway of a Qantas airplane, a Boeing 747-400 that had been set to fly to Tokyo on Sunday night. The flight was forcibly grounded, to the surprise of the passengers, leaving hundreds of them stranded.

The snake, however, was a harmless species: it was of a non-venomous variety, and not even a foot long at eight inches. It has since been taken to be quarantined, in order to determine its origins.

The plane had mostly been on the tarmac at the Sydney airport for most of the day after returning from Singapore, whereby the snake was discovered to have sneaked into the plane by the air crew before any passengers even boarded.

How the little snake got into the plane is still undetermined, but it has been identified by the Department of Agriculture as a Mandarin Ratsnake. It was later killed as precaution, so as to not introduce non-native pests or diseases to the country.

Mandarin Ratsnakes are endemic to Asia, feeding mainly on small rodents and choosing to live in rat borrows.

It is Qantas' second snake incident this year, with the previous encounter being with a much larger snake, a 9-foot-long (3 meters) python, which had chosen to nap on one of the plane's wings on a flight from Australia to Papua New Guinea. Passengers watched in horror as the reptile clung for its life in the air, battling below zero temperatures and strong winds. However, it was discovered to have died during the flight.

It appears that snakes on planes are not an unusual occurrence in Australia, as in 2012 a freight pilot had to make an emergency landing in April 2012, after a snake emerged from the dashboard.