By IANS
Sao Paulo : Three people have been killed and five injured in three separate helicopter crashes within a span of two hours in the south eastern Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, Spanish news agency EFE reported Friday.
The first accident took place Thursday in Carapicuiba, a suburb of Sao Paulo city, where a helicopter carrying four people crashed into a main thoroughfare.
A woman and a child were killed on the spot while the pilot died later at a city hospital. One passenger survived.
About twenty minutes after the crash in Carapicuiba, another helicopter went down in the suburb of Mogi das Cruzes, leaving its two passengers injured.
Less than two hours later, a third chopper crashed in Riberao Preto, 300 kilometres from Sao Paulo. All three aboard survived the accident but were critically injured.
The affluent residents of traffic-choked Sao Paulo, Latin America’s biggest and most populous city, favour helicopters for transport.
The spate of helicopter crashes follows Wednesday’s accident involving a Brazilian air force plane that went down in Pirassununga, 213 kilometres north of Sao Paulo.