The Sunshine Coast-based RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter crew has airlifted a light plane passenger to hospital, after the aircraft her husband was flying crashed into the backyard of a home.
The aeromedical crew arrived at the scene in Cootharaba, near Noosa, just after 9am.
It is believed the pilot of the light plane, aged in his 40s, was landing on a grass airstrip when he lost control of the recreational aircraft, possibly due to an unexpected gust of wind.
RACQ LifeFlight Rescue aircrew officer Scott Reeman said the couple was able to get themselves out of the wreckage.
“The light plane was coming into land on a private airstrip and ended up somersaulting and crashing into a tree,” he said.
“It clipped a palm tree in a house yard while it was airborne and then cartwheeled end-to-end across the yard and clipped another tree.”
The RACQ LifeFlight critical care doctor and Queensland Ambulance Service flight paramedic treated the pilot’s wife, aged in her 50s, for suspected neck, chest and abdominal injuries caused by the impact of crash.
The pilot suffered two minor cuts and was treated at the scene.
The injured woman was in a stable condition when she was airlifted to Sunshine Coast University Hospital.
It was the third aircraft-related mission the Sunshine Coast crews had been tasked to in three days.
On Friday, an RACQ LifeFlight Rescue crew plucked two men from a sinking life raft off the Mooloolaba coast in a winching mission, after engine failure forced the Cessna’s pilot to ditch the aircraft into the ocean.
Later Friday evening, a different LifeFlight crew from the same helicopter base airlifted a man to hospital after he crashed his paraglider on a beach in the Gympie region.
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