Fears that a faulty gearbox was to blame for a helicopter malfunctioning over the North Sea this week were inadvertently sparked yesterday following claims in a leaked memo by a rival company.
In the internal safety notice issued by CHC Helicopter, it was claimed that the crew on board the Bond-operated aircraft had reported “a light associated with the gearbox” before the pilots carried out a controlled landing in the sea.
It was a “catastrophic” gearbox failure that caused Bond flight 85N to crash into the sea 14 miles off Peterhead three years ago, killing two pilots and 14 oil workers.
The crash – on April 1, 2009 – was the UK oil and gas industry’s biggest loss of life since the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988.
In the leaked memo, seen by the Press and Journal yesterday, and dated on the day of the incident, CHC bosses said a problem with the gearbox had been detected – and even said this had been confirmed by Bond at a news conference which took place just hours after the incident.
At the news conference on Thursday, Ashley Roy, director of commercial services for Bond, said it was too early to pinpoint the location of the fault when questioned.
“The aircraft was operating a scheduled offshore crew change when the crew reported a light associated with the gear box,” the document says. “At a news conference a spokesman for the aircraft operator confirmed that the light indication reported by the crew was in association with a low pressure warning for the main gearbox of the aircraft.”
CHC bosses added that all maintenance and flight operations staff must continue to maintain a high degree of vigilance when carrying out the daily scheduled maintenance and preflight inspections of the aircraft – paying “particular attention to the main gearbox”.
Last night, a spokesman for Bond said they were still trying to figure out exactly what happened — and were keeping an open mind as to what triggered the fault.
“There was an indication to say that there was a lack of oil pressure — and there could be 101 reasons for why this happened. Tomorrow we should have a clearer picture as to what exactly took place,” he said.
“There is no cover-up here.”
A spokeswoman for CHC said the information in the alert could have been an “oversight”.