A German air ambulance helicopter was grounded recently after the pilot suffered a broken leg away from base.    The “Christoph 70” helicopter – a Eurocopter EC135 – had landed on the rooftop pad at Pößneck on Tuesday 12th February at 15:30 hours for a patient transfer to Bad Berka.  However, the pilot broke his leg at Pößneck and the helicopter was thus stranded there until a spare pilot could get there to fly it out.  Meanwhile, the pilot was treated on site at the hospital.  It is not clear from local press reports how the accident happened, but the weather was very cold with snow etc, and it would appear likely that he slipped on ice.

“Christoph 70” was founded on 8th June 1994, and operated initially with a Bell UH-1D from the German Army.  On 7th January 1998 operations became the responsibility of ADAC, and over 20,000 mission have been flown to date, including 1,414 in 2012.  The operational base is at Schöngleina airfield just east of the town of Jena, with flights from 7am to sunset.

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com