A US Coast Guard C-130 flew 1,000-mile round trip on Wednesday (May 1, 2013) to deliver blood to an ailing passenger aboard Holland America's Oosterdam as it sailed a three-week cruise from the South Pacific to Vancouver. The Coast Guard plane left Sacramento with two units of blood donated from a local blood bank and dropped it by parachute to Oosterdam which was approximately 500 miles off the coast of San Francisco. It was quickly retrieved by seamen from Oosterdam and delivered to the ship's medical center.
