A South African pilot managed to safely make an emergency landing after a deadly cobra slithered past him and curled up under his seat in the cockpit during the flight.
Rudolph Erasmus, the pilot, was flying four passengers in a private plane when he said he felt a “cold sensation” crawling up his shirt. At that time, the plane was flying at 11,000 feet. Erasmus thought that his water bottle might have been leaking, however, when he looked down, he saw the highly venomous snake disappearing below his seat.
Erasmus then made an emergency landing after noticing the reptile. The private plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers, along with an additional unwanted passenger.
Speaking to the website TimesLive, Erasmus said, “When we did the preflight (procedure) on Monday morning, the people at Worcester Airfield told us that they had seen a Cape cobra lying underneath the wing on Sunday afternoon. They tried to catch it themselves but unfortunately, it sought refuge inside the engine cowlings. The group opened the cowlings but the snake was not there so they assumed it had slithered away.”
After noticing the Cobra, Erasmus said that he had a moment of stunned silence. Even though he was not sure if he should tell the passengers because he didn’t want to cause a panic, he told them about the snake.
Recounting the moment, Erasmus said, “I just said, listen, there’s a problem. The snake is inside the aircraft. I’ve got a feeling it’s under my seat so we are going to have to get the plane on the ground as soon as possible.”
At that moment, the flight was close to the airport at Welkom, so Erasmus told the control tower in Johannesburg about his emergency situation.
After landing, Erasmus was the last one to come out of the plane and he said that he saw the cobra curled underneath his seat. Following the landing, engineers stripped parts of the plane in an attempt to find the snake but were unsuccessful by the time night fell.
During the night, they left some maize meals around the plane to try and lure the cobra out, but the maize was undisturbed even the next morning. Erasmus, and the others, are hoping that the snake got away while they were waiting for the engineers to appear and it is not still hanging around somewhere inside the plane.
