Squirrel helicopter crash in Bergen, Norway May 2017
 

Norwegian news reporting a helicopter has crashed in the ocean in the city center of Bergen while attempting to land on a luxury yacht. All three occupants are accounted for and rushed to hospital.

Reported to be a AS350 with registration G-HKCN arriving from UK earlier today.

norwegian news:

Helikopter krasjet i sjøen i Bergen - Bergen - VG

G-HKCN
Picture of it under water in the papers.
Helikopter styrtet i sjøen i Sandviken - Bergens Tidende

Rumors says a lose tarp or a blanket got sucked into the rotor.
Guess that would do it.
The chopper flew from Shetland to Bergen, added fuel, then flew out to the boat.

Is it only me who is struggling to see where the helicopter was actually going to land on the yacht? Is that upper, rear deck on the really a helicopter landing platform? Looks awfully small.

Bad form to link someone's name with an accident if you don't know it's true!!!!:=

The upper deck is designed as landing pad, foldable railings and flagpole...

https://bt.mnocdn.no/images/eb5591bb...op&q=80&w=2048

skadi

Single engine over the North Sea. That's brave. I wonder what survival gear they had. I assume it must have been non CAT.

Have heard it called a Touch and Go Pad when it is not an "approved pad" as per shipping class rules.

The 3 onboard are alive because a rescue boat happened to be within 800 meters of the accident. The pilot and pax were out of the water and given first aid within 2 minutes, then shortly thereafter in ambulances at the nearby port of Bergen then the hospital.
Timing is everything, so is luck..:ooh:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/166331...n/photostream/ The crew seen here kitting out with their survival suits before leaving Sumburgh. https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4194/3...8045883d_c.jpgAS.350 G-HKCN IMG_2204 by Ronnie Robertson, on Flickr

Looks like the landing pad on that boat is barely big enough anyway. Sudden gust of wind and both chopper and yacht could need serious repairs.

Thanks for clarifying this; looks like tight fit though :bored:

Someone has been busy. The link I shared earlier showed a clear archive picture of the heli landed on the deck. Now every image of the heli in situ has disappeared from the internet!

From your link (still there), 2 pictures of a helicopter on the deck, both include a sun-sail on the front upper deck.......

Reports about a flying tarp earlier on the thread....

And id bet the boat (yacht) didn't hang around too long after the accident for fear of implication and media lenses, everyman for themselves :{

Good to see prudent wearing of immersion suits and fitted emergency floats on the helicopter. In the press photos these appear to have been deployed.
I pray the three chaps are okay.
There but for the grace of God...

Landing area looked ok for a typical helicopter yacht, no concern there. Nothing wrong with the flight to Bergen, the right personal gear and the helicopter had pop out floats (which inflated), probably a raft. I wouldn't expect suits and jackets to be worn for the hop from Bergen airport to the harbor. Unfortunate incident, but I can't see any fault with the helicopter side of the operation - yacht captain is responsible for the helipad condition and preparation to receive a helicopter.

Unprofessionally or unmanned helidecks are always a hazard for which a pilot has to look out for. That is a normal hazard in GAT flying. I, one instance in the North Sea, landed on the 36/22 which had been shut down and unmanned for years and as we were about to touch down a fire extinguisher cover unleashed itself and speared upwards with the sole intention of become entangled with my S76 main rotor.

Peripheral vision, honed for years in both military and civil flying enabled me to pick my helicopter up and I bolt off to the side thereby thwarting the cover in its aims. This also, for which I received no recompense whatsoever, saved Philips Petroleum and Bristow Helicopters from embarrassing insurance claims.

Sometimes it cannot be avoided. Don't knock the driver if it does.

Live AIS shows MY Bacarella still alongside the wharf in Bergen.
MarineTraffic: Global Ship Tracking Intelligence | AIS Marine Traffic

13 hours flying, Booker, Oban, Kirkwall, Sumburgh, Bergen and then to the ship landing in low sun. Not a great day.

Here's a pic of a Robinson on board


https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...G?format=1500w

I wish I had the money where I could rent a chopper to fly me for thirteen hours, and pay for it to fly back again, instead of getting a taxi to Heathrow, first class to Bergan and then a taxi to the docks.

Didn't buy the dual hydraulic option for ship ops either eh😳

Video of the crash from nrk.no
https://youtu.be/5QWY2tAyi-0

Here is a video of the crash, released by the police to a newspaper:

Politiet: Et løst trekk som traff rotoren var trolig årsak til helikopterstyrt - Aftenposten

Bergen Crash
 

Could have happened to anyone...

Witness said: "It looked idyllic, absolutely by the book.

"As the helicopter came to land, I saw something that looked like a tarpaulin fly up from the deck and into the rotor blades.

"It went into a thousand pieces and everything was chaos. The pilot took off from the boat. The helicopter began to spin and landed on his back in the sea.

"It was over in five or six seconds.”

A loose fuel tank cover on the boat caused the crash, Norwegian investigators revealed today.

The metal sheet on the tank on the top deck of the £50 million Bacarella was sucked-up into the Ecuriel chopper’s rotors as it touched-down.

The pilot from HQ Aviation in Uxbridge, west London, tried to quickly take off again but his brand new £1.2 million aircraft plunged into the sea off Bergen on Wednesday evening.

The chopper, operated by a charter company in Uxbridge, West London, had set off from the Orkney Isles for the 200ft three-tier yacht which is on a world cruise.

Witness Jan Solberg, 33, saw the tarpaulin fly into the rotors.

The bo'sn, the OOW and the Master have got some pretty serious questions to answer, it would seem.

Commiserations to the PIC of that Squirrel. Bugger all he could have done to prevent the accident.

Deck Ops
 

B****r all? Well, he could have satisfied himself the Yacht crew were competent for Helideck Ops and that there was a robust system of responsibilities, training, qualifications, etc in place. A competent operator of such ops would be all over that sort of thing.

From the AIBN

https://www.aibn.no/Aviation/Investigations/17-378

''The cover was custom made for hiding a fuel depot newly installed on the helideck.''

Helisniper,


How, pray tell, do you believe that a pilot in England, or on a tech stop at Sumburgh, could possibly have checked that the tarp (or whatever the FOD was) was secure.

We are not supermen, y'know.

Demanding 6Sigma QA stuff is for bureaucrats and office girls. Not for pilots.

One can reasonably expect that the Bo'sn and the bridge officers are seamanlike enough to take reasonable precautions before declaring "deck is clear".

My sympathies are primarily for the PIC. Very much secondarily for the Bo'sn and bridge officers who must be feeling like **** right now.

The pilot was Quentin Smith. Many of you know him as "Captain Q".. Hope they're all safe and sound.. Very unfotunate situation to be in, and nothing a pilot could possibly do to recover..

Dammit. All the best to you and those on board Q.

Heli sniper ..... Don't be a prat .
Hope you are OK Q . What a bugger .
Nigel

And, of course, you don't need to be landing on a ship to encounter loose items - building sites, farms, gardens.......plenty of unsecured hazards.

The point is that the ac commander has a responsibility to manage the risks of any landing site. As complex as yacht-heli ops are, a yacht deck environment is eminently controllable - as are the O&G industry's decks - it's a matter of having a proper safety-focused approach to doing it and no-one should land on a deck unless they know there is a system to prevent any possibility of a FOD occurrence like this.

This was a tragic occurrence but no-one should convince themselves that it was unavoidable. Learn from it and move on.

Many of us have had similar incidents; mine was a very large plastic sack that blew into the rotor system of my Scout during landing at an operational site. Fortunately, the Scout blades are very tough and, apart from the loud bang, there was no damage.
Q, I am so glad that you escaped with minor injuries only and my best wishes for a speedy recovery for you and your passengers.
Pedro

We know helicopters have landed on this yacht before . The helideck would have been certified up to a certain weight by the builders and registration authority. Part of the Ships Orders would be the instructions to make the deck safe for operations.

The pilot would, as I have done on innumerable operations all over the world on everything from 1,000 to 350,000 gross tonnage, land on the deck knowing that it is fit for purpose with absolute confidence.

There is nothing the operator can do beforehand and in this case there was nothing the pilot could do when it happened.

Liability will presumably be the subject of some interesting conversations between the a/c's insurers and the ship's insurers - and we'll probably never know.
Was the ship damaged?

So Heli Sniper . I guess you would have travelled out to the boat and inspected the deck yourself ? I think you will find that the crew will have been well versed in checking the deck was clear . In your wisdom what else can you do other than to personally visit it yourself to check ..... Before every landing . I think you are talking nonsense!
Except the bit about learning from this of course ...