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CHOPPER CRASH TRAGEDIES
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TOP sporting figures have also died before their time in helicopter crashes.
Basketball legend Kobe Bryant, (41) died along with his daughter Gianna and seven others in a crash in California in 2020. Rally car champ Colin McRae was killed in 2007 along with his son and two others, while at the controls of a
PEAK DRAMA
WHEN Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed11,000ftupintheloftyAndesrange in South America on October 13, 1972, survival of any of its 45 passengers seemed unlikely.
Among them were 19 members of Montevideo’s Old Christians rugby team on their way from Uruguay to Chile for a match.
Twelve people died on impact, then more from cold and an avalanche.
But 16 survived through resorting to cannibalism and the efforts of two players, Fernando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, who bravely trekked across the mountains to seek rescue after 72 days.
The events were made into a 1993 film called Alive starring Ethan Hawke.
WATERY GRAVE
FOOTBALL team Alianza Lima were closing in on the Peruvian championships when they flew into Callao airport on a chartered navy plane on December 8, 1987.
But the plane, suffering landing gear problems, crashed into the Pacific Ocean on descent after a wing clipped the water.
Of 44 people on board, only the pilot survived after spending 11 hours in the water.
Sixteen players and the coach died. machine that fell to earth in Scotland. He’d been flying too low.
French Olympic gold medal swimmer Camille Muffat (25) died when two helicopters collided in 2015 during filming of a reality TV show.
Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City FC, was killed in 2018, along with four others, when the chopper he was on crashed in a fireball near the club’s stadium.
It echoed the death of five people, including Chelsea FC vice-chairman Matthew Harding, in a helicopter crash in England in 1996.
SKATE SHOCK
AS A Sabena Boeing 707 made its approach to Brussels Airport on February 15, 1961, it suddenly plunged into a field killing all 72 people aboard.
Among the victims were the entire American figure skating team who had been on their way from New York to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague.
The 18-strong team included 16-year-old Laurence Owen, who’d won the women’s title at the US Championships weeks earlier. Just why Flight 548 crashed remains a mystery.