UNION leaders say operators need to give more assurances to offshore workers that North Sea helicopters are safe after the latest incident involving a Super Puma.
Two years ago, an Emergency Airworthiness Directive was issued over the EC225 and AS332 by the European Aviation Safety Authority over concerns about the fairing gutter, which protects the intermediate gearbox.
In May, a fleet was grounded after an EC225 operated by Bond Offshore Helicopters carried out an emergency landing in the North Sea.
An Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) later initially said a crack was found in the gearbox, but last week said there had been a false alert over failure of the main gearbox cooling and lubrication system.
The AAIB said Eurocopter, the manufacturers of the EC225, should be required by the European Aviation Safety Agency to review the design of the main gearbox lubrication system to ensure the crew was given an accurate indication of the system's status.
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