Weather Hampers Irish Sea Recovery Efforts

Rescuers off the coast of England called off their search Saturday for a man missing since last week's crash of a Eurocopter AS365 (file photo of type, right) in the Irish Sea, after forecasters predicted gale force winds in the area. Six other men perished in that crash.

"The search remains suspended as we are expecting winds of around storm force 10 over the next few days," said a spokesman for HM Coastguard in Liverpool on Saturday. 'The seas will be too high to conduct a search."

Search teams hope to return to the Lancashire coast next week to locate the helicopter's flight recorder, which may contain vital information about the cause of the crash.

As Aero-News reported, the CHC Helicopter Corp. Eurocopter took off from Blackpool airport and went down about 25 miles off the coast of Morecambe Bay December 27, carrying two pilots and five natural gas workers. According to the CHC Web site, the accident occurred on a flight from the Millom West platform to the North Morecambe platform.

"All of us are deeply, deeply saddened by this tragic accident," said CHC President and Chief Executive Sylvain Allard. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and we are doing everything we can to help with the search and rescue operation."

One of Britain's leading aviation experts said Wednesday that the crash was probably caused by a sudden failure that gave the crew little or no time to react.

David Learmount, operations and safety editor for Flight International, said that while in the 1970s and 80s such incidents were "not rare," advancements in technology made last week's tragedy very unusual for today's times.

"It boils down to this," said Learmount, "the company who made the helicopter is a good one, the pilots were fully trained, all the passengers would have been trained to deal with an emergency, and the rescue services got to the scene in quite a short time. So something bad must have happened suddenly and quickly."

FMI: www.chc.ca