Mayday! Passenger finds mouse in her airline lunch

A plane has had to make an emergency landing after a mouse leapt from a passenger’s in-flight meal.

The flight bound for Malaga from Norway’s capital Oslo was forced to land in Copenhagen, Denmark, after only an hour in the air.

Passengers were delayed for more than two and a half hours before finally arriving in Spain.

Jarle Borrestad was sitting next to the passenger on the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) plane and immediately took to Facebook.

He posted: “A lady next to me here at SAS Plus opened the food and out jumped a mouse.”

Mr Borrestad told the BBC that he tucked his trousers into his socks to ensure the mouse could not crawl up his legs.

The airline’s head of media relations said she hadn’t seen anything like it in 30 years in the industry.

Alexandra Lindgren Kaoukji added: “We have just launched an investigation, but a mouse can come from the tiniest space. It is costly to land so the fact we could reach our home base in Denmark meant we could swap to another aircraft. But we need to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

“Every aircraft has a procedure when a rodent is found onboard, but it isn’t common.

“We make a full inspection of the aircraft and all our suppliers’ processes to see what needs to be improved or changed.”

Asked how it could have survived prior to its escape, she said: “We don’t cook everything – I assume the food wasn’t hot.”

But Ms Kaoukji could not confirm the whereabouts of the mouse following the incident on Wednesday.