The Super Puma helicopter fleet, more than half of the aircraft serving the North Sea oil industry, will remain grounded until the safety of each model can be demonstrated.
The move follows Friday's crash off Shetland that killed four oil industry workers.
Eighty representatives of oil and gas operators and major contractors attended an emergency meeting organised by Oil & Gas UK in Aberdeen yesterday to discuss the operational impact of the temporary suspension of Super Pumas helicopters.
The industry body's chief executive, Malcolm Webb, said: "The industry met to set in train appropriate actions to address the operational consequences of the current situation.
"The Super Puma fleet represents over 50% of the capacity in the North Sea. The immediate knock-on effects of this are delays and flight backlogs, with considerable inconvenience to the workforce and their families, and potential adverse effects on offshore activities. Our primary concern is assuring the safety of the workforce. The Helicopter Safety Steering Group, which met on Saturday, recommended that flights of each of the various models of Super Puma helicopter should only resume when sufficient factual information to support this decision becomes available. (Yesterday's) meeting endorsed that position."
He said further meetings of this group and other associated task groups will take place over the coming days and weeks.
Duncan Trapp, vice president for safety and quality at CHC Helicopter, whose aircraft ditched said: "Together, the regulators, authorities, aircraft manufacturer, CHC and other experts will painstakingly investigate the incident to determine - and learn the lessons of - what went wrong.
Meanwhile, oil firm Total confirmed it has chartered four vessels to pick up offshore workers due to return home from platforms in the North Sea.
One of the vessels, the Loke Viking, set off for rigs in the Lerwick area yesterday and was expected to reach the area today at a cost of £48,000 a day.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article