100-yr old injured in birthday helicopter crash

[3ric]

Video on the link below, it's quite spectacular...
http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/top...172125552.html

Helicopter crash on 100th birthday



Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Posted: 1521 GMT (2321 HKT)
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A Swedish man celebrating his 100th birthday with a helicopter ride survived with minor injuries when the helicopter crashed shortly after taking off Tuesday in central Sweden, police said.

Carl Zetterlund, who turned 100 on Tuesday, was to fly to the Stockholm archipelago with his son, grandson and 7-year-old great grandson from a nursing home in Heby, a small town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of Stockholm, police spokesman Ulf Palm said.

But something went wrong shortly after the helicopter took off, and its rotor blades clipped a tree and a lamp post before the aircraft went down in a cloud of dust and smoke.

The four family members, along with the pilot and a nursing home worker on board, escaped with cuts and bruises, Palm said.

Palm said Zetterlund's relatives had chartered the helicopter as a birthday gift.

A local TV crew filming the family gathering got dramatic footage of the crash. Their video showed the rotor blades of the Lithuanian-registered MI-2 helicopter hitting a tree and then clipping the top off a lamp post.

"Then there was a bang, then one of the rotor blades broke off. I huddled up and waited for the crash. And it came almost immediately," one of the passengers, Ove Johansson, told Swedish Radio after the accident.

Johansson said that with the help of two other people he managed to get Carl Zetterlund out of the helicopter. It was not immediately clear whether Johansson was one of the family members.

After the 100-year-old was pulled from the wreck, he was flown on another helicopter to Uppsala University Hospital, where he was in stable condition, hospital officials said.

"He got a helicopter ride after all," Palm said.

He had never flown in an airplane before, and now this happened!

[HomerJSimpson]

Isn't it ironic?

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Once you hit 100 you should avoid doing anything where God might think "OK, NOW!!!"

[KevinNU7]

Originally Posted by BigJohn&TheLions

Once you hit 100 you should avoid doing anything where God might think "OK, NOW!!!"

I disagree, once you hit 80 you should go nuts and do it all

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Originally Posted by KevinNU7

I disagree, once you hit 80 you should go nuts and do it all

In this line of thinking, at 80 Tom Cruise will have sexual relations with a woman!

[dacman]

Dude dies...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe....ap/index.html