"But the runway was so long that once we got up in the air I wasn't concerned about it." But the 1947 Stinson 108 four-seater was struggling to gain altitude. "As we took off I knew that the take-off took a little longer than normal," Tol says. They were taking off from Bruce Meadows Airport in Stanley, where they had landed earlier in the day. Leslie Gropp, 70, was taking his son, Tol, who lives in the Treasure Valley, and two friends on a hiking trip in the mountains. The area is known as the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and it almost lived up to its name for four men on June 30. A local man shared his story this week with KBOI-TV, which is KOMO's sister station in Boise, after he and three others walked away from a single-engine plane crash in the Idaho wilderness. “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.BOISE, Idaho - Imagine living through a plane crash and having the video that captured it all. 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.” 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 pilot told the passengers, informed air traffic controllers he had “a bit of a situation,” and landed the plane nearby. Brian Emmenis/APīut the snake was apparently in hiding and emerged mid-flight. 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. It was a moment of disbelief, I think.”īefore 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.”Ī search of the plane turned up nothing, “so we assumed the snake had gotten out and went on his merry way,” he said. “It was more as if my brain did not register what is going on to be truly honest. “I had a moment of stunned silence,” he said. “As I then turned to my left and I looked down, I saw the head of the snake receding back underneath my seat.” “At first, I thought it was my water bottle leaking,” Erasmus said. 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.”
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.
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