Finding a solution that will allow offshore workers to once again use personal safety beacons on helicopter journeys is a top priority, an industry body said yesterday.
Oil and Gas UK has charged a special working group with looking at the issue.
Personal locator beacons (PLBs) can help rescuers find people if they end up in the sea after a helicopter accident.
But the Civil Aviation Authority instructed helicopter operators that the devices should be switched off for offshore flights.
That decision was taken after accident investigators probing February’s helicopter crash, in which 18 people were rescued after a Super Puma plunged into the North Sea, found the PLBs interfered with the long-range beacons fitted to the helicopter and liferafts.
But earlier this month, another helicopter accident claimed the lives of 16 people. The 14 passengers and two crew were returning from BP’s Miller platform when their Super Puma helicopter crashed in the sea, 11 miles north-east of Peterhead.
In the wake of that, Labour politicians in Aberdeen called for new safety beacons to be developed urgently.
Aberdeen Central MSP Lewis Macdonald said: “It should be possible to find a technological solution that is compatible with the equipment used by helicopters and liferafts.”
Bob Keiller, chairman of Oil and Gas UK’s helicopter-issues task group, said they were looking at the issue.
He said: “Reinstating these beacons is being dealt with by an industry work group which was set up by Oil and Gas UK soon after an offshore helicopter ditched in the North Sea in February.”
He added that the helicopter-issues task group had agreed that “the momentum must be maintained on this work and even accelerated where possible so that we can get PLBs back in use as quickly as we can”.
Jake Molloy, regional organiser for the RMT union in Aberdeen, argued the beacons could be the difference between life and death for offshore workers.
Aberdeen North MP Frank Dorann said: “The return of these personal locator beacons, with technical improvements, would be a confidence boost.”