Deadly cobra slithering under pilot’s seat forces emergency landing in South Africa
A pilot was flying at 11,000 feet with a plane full of passengers when he noticed something slithering around his seat on April 3, according to multiple reports.
“I felt something cold against my hip,” Rudolph Erasmus told Lowvelder, a local South African news outlet.
He figured it was a leaky water bottle, but then he glanced down and made out the head of a snake, according to Lowvelder.
The scaly stowaway wasn’t just any snake — Erasmus thinks it was a Cape cobra, an extremely lethal creature whose venom can kill a person in just 30 minutes, according to the BBC.
“To be truly honest, it’s as if my brain did not register what was going on,” Erasmus, who was flying a Beechcraft Baron 58, a twin-engined aircraft, with four passengers onboard, told the outlet.
After thinking it over for a moment, he decided to alert the passengers to the danger and to the incoming emergency landing, per the BBC. “You could hear a needle drop and I think everyone froze for a moment or two,” he said.
Erasmus made the sudden landing at Welkom Airport, located about 160 miles southwest of Johannesburg, according to GoldFM 104.3, a local radio station.
Snake catchers were dispatched to the tarmac to wrangle the fugitive reptile, but it was not immediately found in the plane, the outlet reported. They think it managed to slither its way into another part of the plane.
Two airfield workers later said they had seen a snake in the plane before the flight but assumed it had left, BBC reported. The exact type of snake it is won’t be confirmed until snake handlers find it again, according to Lowvelder.
“Oh my goodness this could have been disastrous,” Poppy Khosa, the South African Civil Aviation commissioner, told the News24. “Great airmanship indeed which saved all lives on board. Such an amazing story and great handling of the situation by the pilot. Bravo to great airmanship.”
This story was originally published April 5, 2023 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Deadly cobra slithering under pilot’s seat forces emergency landing in South Africa."