There’s a movie coming out this summer called \u201cSnakes on a Plane.\u201d But for Monty Coles, one was quite enough.<\/p>\n
According to a June 3 Associated Press story, the West Virginia pilot was enjoying a leisurely flight at 3,000 feet in his Piper Cherokee when he saw a stowaway peeking out from the plane’s instrument panel: a 4-\u00bd foot snake.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this,\u201d said the 62-year-old man. But advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor came to mind: \u201cNo matter what happens, fly the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coles attempted to swat the snake but it fell to the pilot’s feet, then darted to the other side of the cockpit.<\/p>\n
While maintaining control of the single-engine plane with one hand, Coles grabbed the reptile behind its head with his other.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no way I was letting that thing go,\u201d he said. \u201cIt coiled all around my arm, and its tail grabbed hold of a lever on the floor and started pulling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next step was to radio for emergency landing clearance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came back and asked what my problem was,\u201d he said. \u201cI told them I had one hand full of snake and the other hand full of plane. They cleared me in.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a smooth landing, Coles posed for pictures with the snake, then let it loose.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat snake resides in Ohio now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a movie coming out this summer called \u201cSnakes on a Plane.\u201d But for Monty Coles, one was quite enough. According to a June 3 Associated Press story, the West Virginia pilot was enjoying a leisurely flight at 3,000 feet in his Piper Cherokee when he saw a stowaway peeking out from the plane’s instrument […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3448,201,226,1517,4208,185,256],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}