Furry surprise in airline meal forces flight to make unexpected stop

OSLO, Norway — It's an old cliché to joke about the quality of airline food. This is a new twist.

A woman flying on Scandinavian Airlines flight from Oslo, Norway, to Malaga, Spain, was preparing to eat her in-flight meal. When she opened the box containing the meal, she was stunned to see a live mouse hop out, the BBC reports .

The incident forced the plane to make a diversion and land in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"Believe it or not," Jarle Borrestad, a passenger who was on the flight, says in a post on Facebook . "A lady next to me here at SAS Plus opened the food and jumped out a mouse. Now we have turned around and landed at CPH for flight changes."

Borrestad tells the BBC that passengers on the plane remained calm, but admitted he pulled his socks over the legs of his pants so the mouse could not scurry up his pants' legs.

Alexandra Lindgren Kaoukji, a Scandinavian Airlines spokesperson, tells USA Today the plane made a "very normal landing" and the passengers continued to Spain on a different airplane.

"In these cases, we have very clear procedures to follow, including full inspection of the aircraft and of all our suppliers' processes to see what needs to be improved or changed in order to avoid scenarios like these in the future," she said.