A PILOT in the Northern Territory has been forced to turn his plane around after a snake appeared slithering from his dashboard.

Pilot Braden Blennerhassett, with Air Frontier, was flying freight to the remote town of Peppimenarti in the Northern Territory when he spotted the snake coming out of his dashboard.



Air Frontier director Geoffrey Hunt said Mr Blennerhassett called air traffic controllers on Tuesday to alert them to the snake.



See a picture of pilot Braden Blennerhassett at the Northern Territory News



"He said, we've got a snake on board," Mr Hunt said.



Mr Hunt said the pilot had trouble communicating with the control tower.



"The snake popped its head out near the transmit button that he needed to press to talk to the tower," he said.



He was told to return to Darwin and a snake handler was organised to meet Mr Blennerhassett, but the reptile was never found.



"We have got another chap here who is an aircraft engineer and a snake handler and he had a look and he couldn't find it," Mr Hunt said.



He said the plan now was to try to trap the snake, using a live mouse in a cage as bait.



"You put it into a box with a hole in it, and the snake goes into the box to get the mouse and it stays in there trying to get it," he said.



Until the snake is found, the aircraft has been grounded.



In the 2006 action thriller Snakes on a Plane, actor Samuel L Jackson plays an FBI agent forced to take on a plane full of poisonous snakes as he tries to protect the witness of a mob murder.