Incident: Air Asia A320 near Kuching on Feb 10th 2022, snake on the plane | Hacker News Reader

Incident: Air Asia A320 near Kuching on Feb 10th 2022, snake on the plane

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145 pointsjhugo61 comments

For anyone that isn’t aware of the pop culture reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_on_a_Plane

When I saw this comment, my first thought was "this explanation must be useful for people who don't get internet references, like old people". And then I remembered the movie is from 2006. Oh god we're the old people making not so topical references to ancient stuff and wondering why the young people don't get them.

One of the scariest moments in my life was when I went to Portland to visit my cousins. We got to talking about their parents, my aunt and uncle and so forth.

We were all getting up in years, just as their parents and mine did.

And then one of my cousins said "now we are them!"

Realising that you can remember your parents when they were the age you are now is one of those scary moments.

I just realised that this movie pre-dates HN itself.

Snakes on a Plane is almost exactly the same age today that Silence of the Lambs was when SoaP was released.

I remember the history unrolling differently than wiki says, but I'm not entirely sure... Didn't the entire idea start on 4chan in the early 2000s?

I went along to the midnight premiere of this film at my local cinema. It was completely full, and the crowd was... quite a different crowd to what the cinema usually attracted. At one point before the movie started someone loudly said "it feels like the whole Internet is here!"

Same -- went to the midnight (iirc they just moved it ahead to 10pm, since unlike LotR/etc no one cared) show at the Cinerama in Seattle and it was packed. People brought pool noodles to wave around, the whole crowd was hissing -- I've actually never rewatched it because I assume nothing could compare to the experience of watching it in that setting.

Same with me: the Orpheum on State St. in Madison, WI. Great memories...

For anyone unaware of Samuel L Jackson as bringing a character to the character in his movies, see the (NSFW) video below. There are a lot of actors who do similar, but Jackson is maybe the best and most versatile among them. Not sure he is top tier among Hollywood actors, but he's got a great niche, and has become a cultural icon IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0LBi1MHoaU

Let me just add, he was also in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989), a movie that absolutely everyone should see. But it’s not in the clip above because he plays a DJ (Mister Señor Love Daddy) and doesn’t say MF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCL3OtOzYuQ

likewise, in "A Time To Kill" (1996) where he plays a good role, but does not say MF. That one is just an "ok" movie but it has an incredible cast: Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Donald Sutherland, Ashley Judd, Kiefer Sutherland and more.

He’s also brilliant in True Romance.

Everyone was brilliant in True Romance.

> Not sure he is top tier among Hollywood actors

IMDB has him at #42, but I'll be honest, I don't have much appreciation for their top 50 list. I do think he rates as top tier, though, by my arbitrary judgement.

If he had to atone by planting a tree each time he uttered an expletive, I have no doubt he'd have replanted the entire Amazon forest by now. He's great.

YouTube wants me to sign in to watch it because it might be inappropriate for me

It probably should be. I mentioned it's NSFW. His Quentin Tarantino movies were graphic and violent.

I don't agree with making you sign in either. Here's a mirror: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=c0LBi1MHoaU

The combination of mpv and yt-dlp lets you watch it without signing in. Not sure how they achieve that though.

YouTube's CDN doesn't enforce authentication, only the UI, account backends, etc do. So if you can determine the URL(s) for retrieving the video from their CDN, you can watch it without auth.

Apparently, youtube-dl can't do this anymore (assuming it ever did), since trying to download an age-gated (which was my strat) video fails where it used to succeed.

It still works in yt-dlp though.

> "Many of the early fan-made trailers and later other viral videos and commercials circulated via YouTube, and captured media attention there with such titles as: Cats on a Plane [...], Snakes Who Missed the Plane, All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us [...], Steaks on a Train, and Badgers on a Plane

I'm dying at how creative these internet names/early memes where

What surprises me is how few views (~50k) constituted a meme back then!

"Cats on a Plane" - 51,477 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTYCi3wP-W8

"Snakes Who Missed the Plane" - couldn't find it

"All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us" - 2,059,853 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihAoSwQqo44

"Steaks on a Train" - 52,715 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wXI-DgdgfQ

"Badgers on a Plane" - 32,989 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2R8v_oj0Vo

There was an officially licensed "Snakes on a Sudoku" book. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1402743432/donhosek

and the line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amYzBQMT4VI

Yeah that's the only thing I remember from that movie :)

I mean, seriously, the title was the whole plot.

I remember when I heard about the movie telling my wife about it and she didn't understand.

"It's simple: There are snakes. And Samuel L. Jackson. And they're on a plane! What more do you need?"

I went to the theatre alone.

It was a really lousy movie - but I watched it three times just to hear Samuel L. Jackson say that line! :)

a good bad movie.

an entertaining movie

There's also the 'family friendly' version of the line.

I think this[1] is the right one, but I'm not able to listen to it right now.

[1] https://youtu.be/ejxR0zGaflg

and the pop punk song:

Cobra Starship: Bring It! (Snakes On A Plane) [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - 4,585,530 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wMyKQ6jUg

Does anyone remember a website where you could type your phone number, and it would call and play messages from Sam Jackson about the movie?

This is why I check HN every morning. Made my weekend.

Remind me of that bat that was cruising around in figure 8’s in the passenger cabin of a jet liner and FREAKING OUT passengers.

To be fair, bats can harbor all sorts of viruses (including rabies).

Were they going batshit crazy?

Enough is enough!

I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!

honestly i'm glad you brought up the reference to the awful censorship for this hilariously terrible movie. it made a mark somehow, and i still remembered (and waited for a reference to) it.

Hahaha I'm just happy there are other people to enjoy these stupid cable TV references with :)

D mickey fickey D! 20 mickey fickey 20!

I've seen this movie. It doesn't end well.

hey, the steward gets back with his girl, that's a happy ending

Seriously?? They diverted because of a reptile in an overhead bin? SOP should have been land normally, catch the little rascal, and fly it back home again.

I prefer everyone to be overcautious if something unexpected occurs.

How did the snake get in the plane? Perhaps there's some damage somewhere that allowed the snake to slip in?

Landing is the right choice imo.

> Perhaps there's some damage somewhere that allowed the snake to slip in?

I mean, I agree with your more general point, but for an airliner to operate with unnoticed damage is pretty rare. For a snake to then also climb in through the unnoticed damage? It seems like there are simpler explanations that are much more likely :)

If the snake gets into the passenger compartment and bites someone that's a lawsuit. If they have a reaction to the venom that's a bigger lawsuit. And the company is not going to trust any armchair herpetologist guesses as to what species it is or what it "probably" is. It is also unusual enough of an occurrence that a strict policy of diverting when there's (mf'ing) snakes on the plane won't really impact operations that much.

IOW better safe that sorry.

They diverted, nobody was injured. The airline took a financial hit.

This was about the best possible outcome.

Could you imaging making the call not to divert, and then the snake gets out of the light compartment? Keeping panicked passengers on their seats for landing is going to be a tall order.

A pilot who made that call is going to find it difficult to defend such a decision, and if there were injuries is going to be finding a other career.

Don’t say it.

"I've had enough of these mother trucking snakes on this mother trucking plane."

PepePains

HN why did you change so much? Did Yahoo! become an investor?

In fact, this post is more like the pre-HN Internet than you may realise ;)

the other way around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaweb

web developers.

Had me there in the first half. Thought there had been an airplane crash until I saw the "snake on the plane" part of the title.

Are they sure it was just one?

Snakes... on every plane!

Much worse than last time.

~Snake eater theme playing~

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