Crew of ill-fated helicopter tried to send emergency message

Pilots understood something was wrong 35 seconds before crash

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The pilots of the Copterline passenger helicopter that crashed into the Gulf of Finland soon after takeoff while en route from the Estonian capital Tallinn to Helsinki had tried to send an emergency message shortly before the crash.
      On Monday, a week and a half on from the accident, in which all 14 people on board were killed, the Estonian Ministry of the Economy and Transport announced its findings after the helicopter's flight recorder was returned from Britain to Estonia.
      "The crew knew that something was wrong 35 seconds before the helicopter splashed into the water", said Taivo Kivistik in Tallinn on Monday at a press conference reporting on the findings from the flight recorder.
     
Kivistik said that there was not much of a conversation going on in the helicopter. The voice recorder revealed that one of the pilots repeated the word "mayday" three times.
      However, the call was not heard at air traffic control. "I cannot say if there was a technical fault, or if the pilots failed to push the right button", Kivistik said.
      He added that the successful sending of an emergency message would not have speeded up the rescue operation, which was launched immediately.
      The voice recordings in the flight recorder of the US-made Sikorsky S-76+ model helicopter did not reveal any obvious causes for the crash.
      "Nothing in the examination of the wreckage or the black box indicates that there would have been a collision with a bird or a flock of birds", Kivistik says.
     
An act of terror is considered unlikely, but not completely impossible. So far, nothing in the evidence suggests any such event.
      The flight recorder reveals that the engines functioned until they came into contact with water. The engines have been sent to France, the country where they were manufactured, for additional investigations.
      One of many possible causes under investigation is a fault in the gear transmission between the engine and the rotor. The transmission mechanism is also under investigation. The possibility that a fault in the rear rotor would have caused the crash is also being explored.
     
The wreckage of the helicopter has been taken to Tallinn Airport, and is being examined by investigators of Estonia's criminal police. The commission of inquiry has promised its initial report on the 10th of September. A final report could take a year.
     
Copterline had to cancel all of its flights between Helsinki and Tallinn on Monday because of a delay in the delivery of a spare part from the United States.
      Copterline still has one helicopter operating on the Helsinki-Tallinn route. The spare part was expected to arrive on Tuesday morning.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Post mortem results indicate helicopter crash victims died from drowning (17.8.2005)
  Divers continue to look for helicopter parts after last week´s crash (16.8.2005)
  Flight recorder of stricken helicopter to be sent to Britain for analysis (15.8.2005)
  Fourteen passengers and crew dead after helicopter crashes in the sea off Estonian coast (UPDATED 00:00, 11.8.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat