A HELICOPTER pilot was one second away from preventing a North Sea
disaster, it was revealed yesterday.
Air accident investigator Ann Evans said Captain Jonathan Shelbourne
appeared to have done everything he could to avoid the tragedy last
March, but tests showed that complex weather conditions that night
prevented him from saving the aircraft.
Miss Evans told the fatal accident inquiry in Aberdeen that the last
moments of the flight were analysed by computer, based on information
from the helicopter's flight data recorder.
They revealed that Captain Shelbourne had recognised the helicopter
was plunging towards the sea.
He was only one second too late in taking corrective action, she said.
Eleven men died when the Bristow's Super Puma helicopter crashed
seconds after taking off from Shell's Cormorant Alpha platform.
The aircraft was on a routine two-minute flight to the accommodation
barge Safe Supporter.
The inquiry has heard that a blizzard was blowing that night, and the
temperatures in the North Sea were the coldest for six years.
It is the first time that information from a flight data recorder has
been available to investigators after a helicopter accident in the UK.
Miss Evans, of the Government's Air Accident Investigation Branch at
Farnborough, Hampshire, said two computer simulations were carried out.
One was by the manufacturers, Eurocopter France, and the other at
Farnborough by the Government's Defence Research Agency.
Both tests showed that Captain Shelbourne had operated the aircraft's
throttle when he realised the aircraft was descending rapidly.
The Eurocopter test revealed that his actions should have resulted in
the aircraft flying to safety.
But the Farnborough simulation, which built in the complicated weather
conditions known as a vortex ring, showed Captain Shelbourne was one
second too late in applying throttle.
Mr Hugh Campbell, QC, representing the pilot, asked Miss Evans: ''He
noticed something was going wrong and took steps to correct it. Had he
taken that action a second beforehand he would have been able to fly
away?'' Miss Evans replied: ''Yes.''
Mr Richard Whidborne, principal inspector with the AAIB, said the
hours before the crash had constituted a ''long day'' for Captain
Shelbourne.
He had been called from home while on a weekend off, had to fly from
Aberdeen to Shetland, where there had been delays in loading freight and
clearing snow from the aircraft, and he had been asked to carry out more
flights as the day went on.
Mr Whidborne said fatigue may have increased as the day wore on. ''I
think a pattern of increased aggravation built up,'' he said.
He agreed that mistakes were more likely to be made when people are
fatigued.
In this case he felt action had been taken to get out of a ''hazardous
situation'', but said the degree of urgency was open to question.
He added that after the crash, Captain Shelbourne had told him he
could not understand why the helicopter had not flown away safely after
he had taken the actions he had.
This made Mr Whidborne wonder if there was an ''extra ingredient''
which had made the crash unavoidable.
He said that co-pilot Ian Hooker, who died in the accident, had called
''watch the height'' five times to Captain Shelbourne.
The inquiry resumes on Monday.
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