The soldier and his three comrades were rescued Thursday after their helicopter crashed into the Atlantic Sea.
It was apparently twice not his time to go, when the military search and rescue helicopter rescued the men, after they got into trouble traveling from Mauritania to the Spanish Canary Islands Thursday, crashing into the ocean.
According to The Local, it is still unclear why the AS 332 Super Puma belonging to 802 Squadron went down at approximately 3pm Thursday. The incident happened shortly after they refueled the helicopter in Mauritania, after spending two weeks running military exercises in Senegal.
The Spanish Ministry of Defense said in a statement (in Spanish) they had sent an F18 fighter plan and Delta 4 to the zone to search for any surviving crew. It took four hours to find the captain, a sergeant and a lieutenant who were spotted by a Moroccan rescue helicopter floating in a life raft around 280 nautical miles off the coast of Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.
While so far the Ministry of Defense has not confirmed the identity of the rescued soldiers, ATCpress (in Spanish) reported that at least one member of the crew was experiencing his second lucky escape.
It was reportedly the soldier’s father, Francisco Ojeda, who told the newspaper his son, Sergeant Jhonander Ojeda Alemán was on board the crashed helicopter. With tears of relief, Ojeda said that this was his son’s second lucky survival and that it happened on his 27th birthday. A happy birthday indeed.
The previous incident happened back in March 2014 when Ojeda Alemán was the only survivor of the crash of a QAS 33 Super Puma. The helicopter reportedly exploded during a routine night training exercise in Fuerteventura, killing his four fellow crew men.
