Pilot in South Africa discovers a snake in the plane midflight

Sarah Gambles
Updated ·1 min read
7
In this photo provided by Brian Emmenis, people look inside a plane at the Welkom Airport, in Welkom, South Africa, as they search for a venomous snake that the pilot found hiding under his seat midair, Monday April 3, 2023. Rudolf Erasmus had four passengers on board the light aircraft during Monday’s flight when he felt “something cold” slide across his lower back. He glanced down to see the head of a fairly large Cape cobra “receding back under the seat,” he said.

One South African pilot had a real-life experience with a snake on a plane.

Pilot Rudolph Erasmus was about 11,000 feet in the air when he noticed he wasn’t alone in the cockpit — there was a cobra under his seat.

“To be truly honest, it’s as if my brain did not register what was going on,” Erasmus told the BBC.

How did the South African pilot know about the cobra snake in the plane?

He was transporting four passengers from Bloemfontein to Pretoria. Shortly after the discovery, Erasmus made an emergency landing — “a bite from a Cape cobra is lethal and can kill someone in just 30 minutes,” BBC reported.

He informed the passengers about the snake, and “everybody remained calm,” he told NPR.

What made him notice the snake was that it slithered down his shirt midflight, per CNN.

South African civil aviation commissioner Poppy Khoza praised Erasmus, calling him a “hero” because he “saved all lives on board,” NPR reported.

The snake was not seen again after being spotted in the aircraft, even after engineers stripped the plane to try to find it, per BBC.