Copter Crew on Atlantic Odyssey Survives Crash
Two men attempting the first round-trip helicopter flight from North America to Europe escaped serious injury, but their helicopter was destroyed in a crash near Hopedale, Newfoundland, a radio station reported Friday.
Station KIOU, which monitored the flight of Corpus Christi residents Billy Pugh, 59, and Dennis Cline, 29, said Pugh, the pilot, sustained a cut lip. Cline, 29, the flight engineer and co-pilot, suffered a back injury in the crash into ice last week.
The pair left Corpus Christi on May 15 with hopes of arriving at the Paris Air Show by May 29, but Pugh said Thursday night that the flight was scrubbed and the helicopter was sold to a salvage firm.
Friday the two men were undergoing X-rays at Goosebay, Canada, to determine if they suffered any more injuries.
“I doubt if anybody else ever walked away from a helicopter crash as bad as ours,” Pugh said by telephone from Canada.
Pugh said he had tried to make a 650-mile journey across water from Canada to Greenland on Wednesday, but that an ice storm forced him to turn around a third of the way across and return to Canada.
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