There are amazing things flying under your feet you’ll never know about

Racing pigeons hitching a lift on a plane is the height of laziness. But when it coincides with snakes on the same aircraft, well, that is just downright risky.

The world beneath a passenger’s feet is more than just a collection of Samsonite and American Tourister luggage. It’s not just the freighter jets that carry a vast assortment of cargo across Australia and around the globe.

The list of special cargo presented to a pilot ahead of a commercial passenger flight is rarely the same.

Officially, it is a safety document. Called a NOTOC (Notice to Captain), its primary purpose is to highlight potentially dangerous and special cargo aboard, and it is a document mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

The world beneath a passenger’s feet is more than just a collection of Samsonite and American Tourister luggage.Credit: Getty Images

The NOTOC also provides important information needed in an emergency, so firefighting first responders can receive guidance as to chemicals or other dangerous or flammable items in the hold, say, in the event of a cargo fire.

A crew may fly a whole day with nothing listed on the NOTOC, while at other times the list is varied, interesting, sometimes bizarre and occasionally sobering.

Dogs and cats are, of course, the creatures found most often in the flying menagerie, whether they belong to a family moving interstate or overseas, or they’re a group of puppies or kittens on their way to meet their new families. On a pilot’s walk around to inspect the aircraft they are about to fly, it is hard to resist saying hello to an anxious little puppy waiting to be loaded on board.

Dogs and cats are, of course, the creatures most often found in the flying menagerie.Credit: AP

A special cargo hold is used to transport live animals, which is both pressurised and heated. Occasionally, a group of dogs loaded together may decide that a barking competition is the best way to pass the time, and sometimes amused passengers can hear the cacophony rising from beneath the carpeted floor before take-off.

Apart from dogs, cats and birds, other creatures great and small regularly come along for the ride, including live mud crabs and live fish, even live insects. It’s also not uncommon for there to be reptiles, including lizards and, yes, even snakes on a plane. They are, of course, carefully caged because Samuel L. Jackson can’t be on every flight.

The packaging of other dangerous goods of the non-slithering kind is also extremely important. There are dozens of regulations about what can be transported in the cargo hold of a passenger aircraft and how. These regulations are much more restrictive for a passenger plane than they are for an aircraft solely used to transport freight.

All creatures are carefully caged because Samuel L. Jackson can’t be on every flight.Credit:

There are also restrictions around where on the aircraft dangerous goods can be loaded. Magnetised material, for example, must be stored in the rear cargo hold to ensure it doesn’t interfere with the navigation instruments in and under the flight deck.

Very low-level radioactive material can be transported but must be kept away from animals and undeveloped photographic film, though the latter probably isn’t as much of an issue in 2025.

The most common danger relates to batteries, in particular lithium ones. There are many restrictions on how these need to be packaged and carried due to the high risk of fire, which is why it’s so important for passengers to play their role to ensure the safety of these items when they are asked about them at check-in both at the airport and online.

Freshly cut flowers are often in the hold from Asia, and from as far as the Netherlands. The NOTOC will alert to the presence of dry ice for items that need to be kept frozen for an extended period and which is often used when transporting items associated with animal reproduction. Packaged blood regularly travels to ensure stocks are sufficient and balanced around the country.

At the height of the pandemic, as international and state borders closed, passenger aircraft became solely freight aircraft, ensuring everything from millions of vaccines to books on mastering sourdough made it around the world in a timely fashion.

Among the most sobering items for some pilots on the NOTOC are live human organs. These are generally listed as “must ride” because the clock is probably ticking for the anxious recipient at the other end. It doesn’t make the plane go faster, but it does make the mission a little different to the school holiday flight to Movie World.

Of course, fresh, frozen, dangerous or alive, special cargo will make it safely to its destination, just as passengers do. But the racing pigeons must always be confused about why they weren’t allowed to do so out in the fresh air.