Albanian inmate Alket Rizaj broke out of a maximum security prison in Greece twice -- in 2006 and 2009.

On both occasions, accomplices swooped in to the prison's courtyard on helicopters and inmates climbed aboard using rope ladders.

Both times, Rizaj was recaptured.

Last month, another prison escape in Greece tried to use the same tactic.

But the plot was foiled when the prisoner was shot and the chopper was forced to land on the prison parking lot.

In 1971, Joel David Kaplan escaped from a Mexican jail aboard a helicopter. The New Yorker's flight inspired the book "The 10-Second Jailbreak: The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan" and the 1975 movie "Breakout."

And in France, Pascal Payet escaped not once, not twice but three times from French prisons.

Each time, he was recaptured.