All this week Energy Voice has been looking back at the events surrounding the 1986 Chinook helicopter disaster ahead of the 30th anniversary on Sunday. Pilot Neville Nixon was only 44 when he lost his life. Here, his wife Pauline tells of how her life has been impacted since that day.
The wife of a pilot who was killed after a Chinook crashed on return from a North Sea platform has paid tribute to her “wonderful” husband.
Reverend Pauline Nixon spoke to the Press and Journal’s sister publication Energy Voice ahead of the 30th anniversary of the November 6th disaster in which 45 men died.
There were just two survivors.
The mother-of-three said she was “just shocked” after the death of her husband who she described as her “soulmate”.
Her partner Neville had been working as an offshore helicopter pilot for four years when the accident happened.
The Chinook flight had been on its way to Sumburgh Airport from Shell’s Brent Delta platform that morning.
Reverend Nixon, who previously worked as a pharmacist until she retrained a decade ago, had been at her job in York where the family lived when news of the accident began to come through.
She said: “I received a call from someone in Aberdeen who said there had been an accident but they could not give any more information.
“Later my GP and my vicar came in to the chemist where I worked and I just knew.
“I was worried about the children, it was on the news you see. Someone had told my eldest daughter about it at school and she had thought they were having her on.”
Immediately after the crash, a colleague and friend of Neville’s came straight down to York, where the family lived to offer support.
She said: “To start with nothing is real, you feel like you’re living in a bubble. Everyone is getting on with their lives when everything in yours has fallen apart. I was just shocked.
“We had the press and the TV crews on the door step non-stop but we had very supportive friends and my parents were with me and helped us.
“Neville was just lovely. He was a gentleman – he used to get called ‘low-level Neville’. He was a very Christian man and a wonderful husband and father. He was my soul mate.
“The youngest really can’t remember him that much which is sad but the older two do remember him more. It was strange when they got married and he wasn’t present. I have got four grandsons now,
which he would have just loved.
The grandmother said she “can’t forget” the anniversary of the accident which killed her husband and said she still doesn’t like fireworks, with the occasion falling the day before.
She and her daughters make sure to contact one another on the day and reminisce about Neville.
Reverend Nixon said she was encouraged to change career 10 years ago after encouragement from family and friends.
A service is being held on Saturday by the Oil and Gas Chaplaincy in Aberdeen to mark the anniversary of the Chinook disaster and to pay tribute to others who have lost their lives while
working in the industry.
She will attend the service being held at St Nicholas Kirk on Saturday and said while “everyone grieves in different ways, you never forget.”
Recommended for you
