4 hurt in South Cotabato helicopter crash

SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — Four people, two of them foreigners, were injured in a helicopter crash in Tupi town at 9:57 a.m. Wednesday.

Superintendent Aldrin Gonzalez, spokesman of the Police Regional Office-12, said the four-seater helicopter carrying the Hispanic entrepreneurs Jorge Gonzales and Cecile Donaire and their Filipina companion, Alicia Bengco, was taking off from a pineapple plantation in Barangay Kablon, Tupi when it lost power and crashed, hurting the three of them.

The pilot of the ill-fated helicopter, Captain Danny Dennis Figueroa, was also injured.

Responding personnel of the Tupi municipal police and barangay officials in Kablon immediately rushed them to a hospital, according to Gonzalez.

Gonzalez said the Raven 2 chopper is owned by the LionAir Incorporated, operator of small helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft for charter.

The three passengers of Figueroa, all executives of the transnational fruit firm Dole-Stanfilco Inc., chartered helicopter for an inspection tour of orchard plantations at the border of South Cotabato’s Polomolok and Tupi towns.

The incident preceded the May 14 crash in T’boli, South Cotabato of a helicopter spraying chemicals on a Cavendish banana farm in a hinterland in the municipality, hurting its pilot, Captain Reynaldo Acosta.