Former President George H.W. Bush prepares to land on the lawn at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport, Maine.

WASHINGTON: Former US president George H.W. Bush celebrated his 90th birthday by carrying out his eighth parachute jump.

“It’s a wonderful day in Maine — in fact, nice enough for a parachute jump,” tweeted the elder Bush, who has seemed frail in recent public appearances, and is often seen in a wheelchair.

The 41st commander-in-chief parachuted out of a helicopter near his family home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Television footage showed the aircraft hovering over the target of the skydive, the jump and then the former president on the ground a short time later, with a swarm of people assisting him.

“41 doing ‘great, exhilarated’ following his skydive and a ‘hot’ landing,” his spokesman Jim McGrath said on Twitter after the jump.

The tandem jump was Bush’s eighth, with the first on September 2, 1944 — when he was shot down over the Pacific island Chi Chi Jima as a pilot in World War II.

He recalled that experience in an NBC interview with his granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager aired Thursday, acknowledging it actually made him want to jump again — and do it right.

“I pulled the rip cord too early, hit the tail of the plane with my head, just a glancing blow,” he said.

“And that, I decided that later on, well I want to do it right. And so that did spark my interest in making another jump — this time getting it correct.”