An elderly woman who needed to be medically evacuated while hiking along a mountain in Arizona, USA ended up being the victim of a nightmare helicopter rescue which has since gone viral.

The 74-year-old woman was hiking in Phoenix Mountain Reserve when she tripped and fell and found herself unable to walk. Firefighters were dispatched to rescue her by helicopter, strapped her into a basket and began to airlift her.

That was when things took a bizarre turn – several, repeated ones.

As rescuers winched the woman up, the stretcher she was strapped into began to spin, picking up speed until it was rotating wildly like a windmill.

Video footage of the shocking scene was quickly uploaded online and had been viewed millions of times on social media by Wednesday afternoon.

The Phoenix Fire Department said the spinning was down to a line that did not operate correctly and said such occurrences were “very rare”.

A spokesperson said the woman was in a stable condition and ““suffered no ill effect from that spin, other than being a little bit dizzy.”