Australian father hires helicopter to find son trapped for 30 hours in car wreck after police say he 'probably ran away'

The police thought the missing son of a worried Australian father had run away — but he refused to believe this, and used his instinct to find the teenager, who had spent 30 hours trapped in car wreckage.

Tony Lethbridge saved the life of his son, Samuel, after hiring the helicopter that found him because he had a gut feeling that the teenager was stuck after a car accident.

The father-of-three had heard a story about a car crash victim in the same area, who was not found for five days.

"I wasn't going to let that happen," he said.

The worried father, 51,  raised the alarm after Samuel Lethbridge did not return on Sunday morning to the family home at Lake Macquarie, after a Saturday night out with friends in the nearby city of Newcastle.

The teen had dropped off a friend about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from home early Sunday morning before he vanished, the father said.

On Monday morning, he hired a helicopter and the car was seen in a scrub off a highway 20km (12 miles) from home.

"When I saw the police, they thought he'd run away. I said that's not Samuel. When he doesn't show up or phone, something's seriously wrong," Tony Lethbridge told the AP.

"I understand that they've got a lot to do and they hear this every day, but I took matters into my own hands and was thinking all night that tomorrow morning, I'm just going to get a helicopter and go looking for him because we're running out of time - it's been long enough," he added.

His son, 17, remained in intensive care in a hospital with multiple fractures two days after the crash.

Lee Mitchell, pilot and part-owner of Skyline Aviation Group at Lake Macquarie, gave the worried father a discount on the helicopter after hearing how worried he was about his son.

Although it usually costs 1,200 Australian dollars  (£693) an hour to hire one of his helicopters, he let the father give what he had on him.

"He just said: 'I've got $1,000 (£577) on me, will that be enough?' and we said: 'Yes, it would,'" Mitchell said.

Within 15 minutes, they found the young man. 

Mitchell said he thought it was crucial that the father had hired the helicopter, as it would have been very difficult to see the car from road level, but it was easily spotted from air.

"It's priceless. If it's A$1000 I've got to pay to get his life, I'm OK with that," the father said.