Tourists escape helicopter crash
Four tourists from Australia and Britain sustained minor injuries when a helicopter carrying them on a scenic flight in New Zealand crashed on a glacier today, one of the passengers said.
The Jet Ranger helicopter was flying to Fox Glacier in New Zealand’s South Island when it tipped over while landing in fresh snow, Australian passenger Ronny Tjahjono said.
Tjahjono said the helicopter’s main rotor blade crumpled on impact, the windscreen shattered and aviation fuel began to leak as smoke poured from the engine.
He managed to scramble out of the wreckage with his wife, seven-year-old son, a British woman and the pilot. They each sustained minor injuries, including bruises and whiplash.
‘‘This was a nightmare,’’ Tjahjono said. ‘‘I was thinking it was going to explode.’’
Tjahjono, from Perth in Western Australia state, said the helicopter was close to the edge of an ice shelf and did not have far to roll before it would have plunged off the glacier.
‘‘If we’d dropped off the cliff it was game over for us,’’ he said.
The accident was witnessed and videotaped by other tourists in the group who moments earlier had landed on the shelf in another helicopter.
A Squirrel helicopter was used to airlift the damaged Jet Ranger off the glacier.
A spokesman for flight operators Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopters, said the accident was ‘‘not really major’’ and that the helicopter had ‘‘got caught in a bit of soft stuff’’.
Aviation authorities are investigating.
