Emerald Islander
If you care to read through the thread, there are many contributions from people who are or were involved in SAR that explain the how and why it might have happened.
Essentially the crew were mislead by an approach chart that did not highlight the danger presented by Black Rock. Radar information that might have revealed the hazard at an earlier stage appears to have been overwritten by other data on the multi function display. Basically, they didn't see Black Rock or appreciate the danger it presented until it was too late.
Personally I believe that the crew probably regarded this as nothing more than a bit of a mundane training mission to the West Coast from Dublin. Their job was to act as a radio relay for another aircraft further out in the Atlantic. No real excitement to be had and the weather was fairly horrible with cloud almost down to sea level. Early hours of the morning, no one was right on top of their game. So the little hints that things weren't quite going to plan got missed. Simple as that really.
The helicopter was equipped with everything needed to allow safe flight in pretty much any conditions, so bad weather in and of itself would not cause the crew any problems.
Read through the whole thread and the accident report and come to your own conclusions.
Last edited by G0ULI; 23rd Apr 2017 at 01:41.