US media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner was flown to hospital in Buenos Aires today for an emergency apendicitis operation.

A Guardian of London report said Turner had been vacationing at his mountain estate in Villa Traful, about an hour’s drive from the ski resort of Bariloche in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina, when he was rushed to the San Carlos Clinic in Bariloche with acute apendicitis.

The report quoted a spokesperson for the clinic as saying: “We offered to operate him here but he didn’t want to.”

“Turner, 75, then boarded a private plane to fly the approximately 1,000 miles to Buenos Aires, where he was due to have the operation later on Friday at the Instituto de Diagnostico hospital in the upscale neighbourhood of Recoleta,” the report said, adding:

“Turner bought his large mountain estate, some 5,000 hectares (over 12,000 acres), in 1996. Set on the foothills of the high Andes mountain range in Patagonia, Turner often goes trout fishing there.”

•Photo shows Ted Turner.