It wasn’t exactly “Snakes on a Plane,” but one deadly cobra forced a steady pilot to make an emergency landing in South Africa on Monday.
“I felt this cool sensation, sort of, crawling up my shirt,” pilot Rudolph Erasmus told the BBC. “As I turned to the left and looked down I saw the cobra… receding its head backwards underneath the seat.”
According to Erasmus, he first felt a cold sensation on his back, but didn’t immediately process what was happening. Once he saw the serpent, he warned his four passengers they had a slithering stowaway onboard and prepared for an emergency landing in the northeast city of Welkom, roughly 95 miles from where their journey began.
“You could hear a needle drop and I think everyone froze for a moment or two,” Erasmus said.
The Beechcraft Baron 58 was flying at 11,000 feet when Erasmus spotted the cobra. He landed the plane safely, though the snake — whose toxic bite may have been deadly — remains on the lam.
The African Snake Bite Institute says South Africa is home to seven species and one subspecies of cobras. It’s unclear which species forced Erasmus’s plane from the sky.
South Africa’s civil aviation commissioner praised Erasmus for saving “all lives on board,” which the pilot called an exaggeration.
“It’s also my passengers that remained calm as well,” he said.
Two employees at the airfield where the plane took off claimed they saw a snake near the aircraft the night before the flight, but were unable to wrangle the serpent. Erasmus said he searched the plane prior to takeoff and saw no sign of the snake. All agreed it must have “crawled out overnight or earlier that morning.”