An outing in the skies above Australia’s Northern Territory had an unexpected and extremely nightmarish ending, after an enormous spider dropped onto a pilot as he brought his plane to the ground.
Footage obtained by Australia’s 9News shows a giant huntsman spider crawling on the ceiling of a Cessna before falling on top of the aircraft’s pilot.
The creepy incident occurred during a flight over Kakadu National Park. The massive, light brown arachnid was spotted inside the plane a week earlier, but it is reported that the maintenance workers assumed that it was no longer lurking in the cabin. They were terribly mistaken.
In the video, the small single-propeller plane is seconds from touching down on the runway, when the 8-legged passenger reveals itself from behind the windshield’s visor. The big insect then falls onto the pilot, causing some emergency maneuvering inside the cabin, and also laughter.
Sean Hancock, a tourist who was in the plane with his wife, recounted the uniquely Australian event.
“He’s panicking, trying to brush it off his leg,” Hancock told the outlet, describing the pilot’s reaction. “He wasn’t a fan at all.”
Hancock caught the incident on camera while filming the plane’s landing. He said that his wife noticed the spider and pointed it out to him.
“I saw the spider and I just started laughing because I knew it was just a harmless huntsman,” Hancock said. The “big boy” was “a good 15-centimeters across” he told 9News.
Hancock, who owns pet snakes, wasn’t squeamish about the encounter, though. Apparently unbothered by the incident, he and his wife went to watch “croc jumping” after the flight.
Unfortunately, there are many similar stories about unpleasant creatures sneaking their way onto flights. In 2019, a Canadian student was stung by a stowaway scorpion while travelling from Toronto to Alberta.
More recently, in May, a flight from India to New York had to divert its course when a live bat made its way onto the plane. The animal flew around the cabin section of the plane mid-flight, causing mayhem.
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