A British man has died after being struck by a helicopter rotor blade during a freak accident in Greece.
22-year-old Jack Fenton was hit and killed by the propeller after disembarking from a chartered flight from the island of Mykonos to Spata, near Athens.
“He was the first to disembark the Bell 407 helicopter in Athens and as he moved to the back, he was hit in the head by the aircraft’s small rear rotor,” a senior police official told The Times. “There was no chance of him surviving. His death was instantaneous.”
The Oxford Brookes student was reportedly travelling alongside a group of British tourists that included his parents and sister and had returned from a brief holiday to the island of Mykonos prior to the incident. The pilot reportedly radioed his colleague on board another helicopter, which had the man’s parents on, to raise the alarm.
The pilot of the second helicopter chose to divert from the private airport and instead made an unscheduled landing at Athens International Airport to prevent the man’s parents witnessing the scene of the tragic accident.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man who has died in Greece and are in contact with the local authorities.”
Giorgos Kalliakmanis, head of the police union, told Greek media that the pilot will be investigated to see if he advised the passenger off his aircraft before the blades stopped spinning. “These propellers run for about two minutes from the time he turns the engine off unless he presses a button which stops them at 50 seconds,” he said. “The helicopter door has no security, anyone who wants to open the door and get out. The preliminary investigation will look at whether the pilot informed them to get out when the propeller and engines stopped.”
An investigation is underway.
