The Yorkshire Air Ambulance is to star in another series of the hit BBC1 series Helicopter Heroes.

Paramedics, pilots and fund-raisers for the charity, which covers more than five million potential patients across the county, will feature in 20 new episodes.

BBC Yorkshire programme makers have flown on more than 500 lifesaving missions since last autumn, filming dramatic rescues as they happened.

The programme is presented by Crimewatch star Rav Wilding, who, as a police officer, called in air ambulances on a number of occasions. He said: "Television doesn't often get as close as this to real life or death situations."

Among the highlights of the series are the rescue of two motorists trapped under their overturned Porsche in Bradford and the race to get a critically injured two-year-old girl to hospital after a riding accident on the family farm in North Yorkshire.

Also featured will be the case of a workman who severed his hand with an electric saw but was flown to Leeds General Infirmary so quickly surgeons were able to reattach it.

The series features the arrival of the second Yorkshire Air Ambulance and its first rescue missions.

YAA chairman Peter Sunderland said: "There are no actors involved - these are real people involved in situations requiring emergency medical assistance."

Helicopter Heroes begins on Bank Holiday Monday at 9.15am on BBC1. It will be shown five days a week for four weeks. Ten programmes will be repeated in the evenings in the near future.