Snake on a plane: Cobra in airplane cockpit prompts emergency landing

[Bogertophis]

It really pays to keep your cool with snakes- even if they're in your sleeve while flying a plane.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/c...ica/index.html

Snake on a plane: Cobra in airplane cockpit prompts emergency landing



By Gregory Wallace and Catherine Nicholls, CNN

Published 1:09 PM EDT, Fri April 7, 2023

01:4

Deadly cobra slithers up pilot's shirt during flight

00:37

CNN —
South African authorities are applauding a pilot’s courage for safely landing an aircraft after feeling a venomous stowaway cobra slithering on his body mid-flight.
The pilot, Rudolf Erasmus, told CNN he was piloting a small aircraft on Monday with four colleagues aboard when he felt a “cold sensation … underneath my shirt at my hip area.”

“At first, I thought it was my water bottle leaking,” Erasmus said. “As I then turned to my left and I looked down, I saw the head of the snake receding back underneath my seat.”
“I had a moment of stunned silence,” he said. “It was more as if my brain did not register what is going on to be truly honest. It was a moment of disbelief, I think.”
Before departing on the first part of the day’s multileg trip, Erasmus said he had heard from people at the airport “that they saw this cape cobra that was seeking refuge underneath our wing of the aircraft and had a suspicion that it crawled into the engine cowling.”
A search of the plane turned up nothing, “so we assumed the snake had gotten out and went on his merry way,” he said.


People look inside the plane at Welkom Airport, in Welkom, South Africa, where pilot Rudolf Erasmus discovered a venomous snake under his seat mid-flight.
Brian Emmenis/AP

‘A bit of a situation’

But the snake was apparently in hiding and emerged mid-flight.
The pilot told the passengers, informed air traffic controllers he had “a bit of a situation,” and landed the plane nearby. All five people onboard emerged unscathed, and the snake was found under the pilot’s seat “in a nice pretty little bundle,” Erasmus said.
The snake was a large cape cobra, according to the South African Civil Aviation Authority, which congratulated Erasmus “for displaying impeccable bravery after landing his aircraft incident-free, albeit under extreme pressure.”
“He remained calm in the face of a dangerous situation and managed to land the aircraft safely without any harm to him or his fellow passengers on board, displaying to the world that he is an aviation safety ambassador of the highest order,” Poppy Khoza, the aviation authority director, said in a statement on Friday.
How to survive a cobra bite -- or better yet, avoid one entirely

Cobra proves elusive again

Cape cobras have a venomous bite, and the adults can reach more than 5 feet long, according to the South African National Biodiversity Institute.
Local snake catchers were called to the plane after landing, but Erasmus said the snake had disappeared. He and some engineers spent the next two days pulling the aircraft apart, searching for the snake.
“They took out the seats, the carpets, the panels – basically everything in the aircraft that they could strip at that point, they did,” he said. “But once again, unfortunately with no success.”

[YungRasputin]

friend sent me this - so wild - like how crappy does your luck have to be to not only have a venomous snake on your plane, to not only have a cobra but the most venomous cobra on the continent

[Bogertophis]

friend sent me this - so wild - like how crappy does your luck have to be to not only have a venomous snake on your plane, to not only have a cobra but the most venomous cobra on the continent

Oh I don't know, I think this pilot had MARVELOUS luck! After all, he wasn't bitten & he didn't crash the plane. I'd buy a lottery ticket if that was me. If anything, that poor snake is probably in jeopardy now.

(What you DON'T want for a passenger is a CRANKY cobra! )