“THOUGHT MY BOTTLE WAS DRIPPING, LOOKED LEFT AND SAW A COBRA” – PILOT SEES DEADLY COBRA MIDAIR
Out of all, the worst nightmare of a pilot is some issue mid-air. Now imagine seeing a snake under the seat while you’re at a height of 11,000 feet.
Kudos to the South African pilot for being brave and not losing his cool despite seeing a deadly cobra under his seat in a cockpit while in mid-air.
Rudolph Erasmus has been flying for 5 years but never witnessed such a life-threatening flight ever before. On Monday morning Rudolph was on his routine flight from Cape Town to Nelspruit with 4 passengers.
While soaring high at a height of 11,000 feet, Rudolph had to make an emergency landing. He felt something cold near his waist, which he presumed to be his water bottle dripping. But when he turned left and looked down – he saw a deadly Cobra.
Not just a normal cobra, it was a Cape cobra. A Cape Cobra’s bite can send you to heaven in just 30mins. Rudolph had a few moments of stunned silence for himself after which he made his decision of being thoughtful.
Rudolph chose to remain calm and not create any chaos. Rudolph also said that he had second thoughts about letting the passengers know but then thought it was his responsibility and their right to be told about what was going on.
When asked how he spilled it to them Rudolph 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” After which he stated that they’ll be doing an emergency landing.
Following his announcement, he made an emergency landing at Welkom. Once the landing was done, all the passengers got down from the flight, and at last Rudolph also safely got out of the flight.
Once they are out, the first task they have is to make sure that the snake leaves the flight. So, they had to try and get it out by themselves. When they got to it, it was seen all curled up under the seat.
But when tried to get it out, it snuck beneath and disappeared. This led to a long wait for engineers to come and open up the parts to get the snake up. But later when opened up and tired, the mission failed and the sun already set.
So, the plane was left alone the night with maize poured around it, to know if the snake snuck out. But later in the morning, the maize was left undisturbed nor did they find the snake. So it was assumed that the snake had crawled out while they were waiting for the engineer’s arrival.
Rudolph’s braveness was appreciated by everyone and is termed a hero by the Civil Aviation Commissioner. And Rudolph has also stated that he’d continue flying from Wednesday.