What seemed like an ordinary flight for South African pilot Rudolph Erasmus took an unexpected turn when he discovered a surprise passenger at 11,000ft.
The surprise passenger was not a human, but rather a cobra crawling under his seat! “Honestly, it’s like my brain doesn’t understand what’s going on,” he told the BBC.
“It was a moment of […] amazement,” he added, explaining that he initially thought the cold feeling down his back was due to his water bottle. “I felt this cool sensation, like something was crawling behind my back,” he said, thinking maybe he hadn’t capped the bottle tightly and water was dripping down his shirt.
“As I turned to the left and looked down, I saw the cobra […] retreat under the seat.” He then made an emergency landing on his flight from Bloemfontein to Pretoria. The private plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers, along with the snake.
A Cape cobra bite is deadly and can kill in just 30 minutes. Not wanting to sow panic, Mr. Erasmus says he thought carefully before calmly informing the people on board of the presence of this undesirable. He was also afraid that the snake would head backwards and cause a general panic. Finally, he decides to inform them: “I said to the passengers, ‘Listen, there’s a snake on the plane, it’s under my seat, so let’s try to get down on the ground as soon as possible.'”
And what was the reaction of the passengers? Mr Erasmus describes a moment of absolute silence: “You could have heard a pin drop and I think everyone froze for a while.”
Pilots are trained to handle many scenarios, but certainly not to handle snakes in the cockpit, he said, adding that panic would have just made the situation worse. The plane made an emergency landing in the town of Welkom.
However, the snake’s presence, while shocking, was not a total surprise. Two people working at the Worcester flying club, from where the plane took off, said they saw a reptile taking refuge under the plane. They tried to catch him, but without success. Mr Erasmus said he looked for the snake before boarding his passengers, but “unfortunately it wasn’t there so we all safely assumed it must have been crawling outside overnight or earlier this morning. there, which was Monday”.
The crawling passenger is still missing, the technicians having dismantled the plane without finding him!