Crashes prompt search for safer ride to offshore oil rigs

[peejay 327]

Crashes prompt search for safer ride to oil rigs

Fatal helicopter accidents raise concern in the Gulf

By ROMA KHANNA

2009 Houston Chronicle

Feb. 1, 2009, 1:50PM

The Sikorsky helicopter carried seven oil-rig workers as it took off for the Gulf of Mexico last month, just as thousands of flights do each day over distances beyond the reach of radar and out to platforms that rise from deep coastal waters.

Seven minutes after takeoff on Jan. 4, the helicopter crashed into a southern Louisiana marsh. Both pilots and six of the workers, including one Texan, died.

It was the 11th fatal flight of a helicopter shuttling workers to jobs in the Gulf in the past five years, according to a Chronicle review of National Transportation Safety Board records. Those crashes killed 38 people, including 10 who died off the coast of Galveston in March 2004. The causes for the crashes vary but include flying too low or running out of fuel.

According to a preliminary report released last week, the Sikorsky flight carried seven workers on their way to Shell Oil Co.’s South Timbalier platform. It lifted off from a helipad in Amelia, La., soaring through skies scattered with clouds. Dispatchers heard of no problems before it lost the helicopter 12 miles into the flight.

Rescuers found the wreckage and one lone survivor.

Helicopter operations play a vital role in local oil exploration, providing the main form of transportation to more than 5,500 platforms fanned out from the Texas and Louisiana shores. Platform-bound flights take off as many as 9,000 times a day, the NTSB estimates. Because radar coverage does not extend over the Gulf, pilots must fly at low altitudes and with ample distance from other aircraft, whose exact locations are unknown.

Three years ago, NTSB officials began to press for more safety technology on such flights. Progress has been made on some recommendations, but little action has been taken on others.

“Once somebody leaves the base, communications are limited,” said Martin Pociask, a spokesman for Helicopter Association International, a trade group that helped gain support for a satellite system in the Gulf of Mexico. “A couple hundred miles out, the weather can change drastically. This is a really critical tool in trying to reduce accidents and improve communications.”

Pleas for warning system

In a speech to a Helicopter Association International meeting last year, the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration spoke about the crash rate for operators in the Gulf. In 2006, he said, for every 100,000 hours flown, helicopters had 1.5 accidents, higher than commercial aviation rates.

“Helicopters flew over one million hours in the Gulf,” Robert Sturgell said at the meeting in Houston. “While this isn’t on par with the commercial safety record, it’s important to keep in mind the kinds of operations in the Gulf — brief trips from one elevated helipad to another, that take place all day long. With that kind of work, the margin for error is small because of the operational hazards.”

In 2006, NTSB officials asked the FAA to require the installation of warning systems that would alert pilots flying dangerously close to terrain and to implement other ways to track flights in areas without radar coverage.

Their pleas followed the 2004 crash off the coast of Galveston, the deadliest in recent years. Investigators concluded the helicopter crashed because the crew did not realize they were descending into the water.

“A terrain warning system would have given pilots enough time to arrest their descent and save the lives of all aboard,” NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said in 2006 after officials determined the cause of that crash. “It is well past time for the benefits from these standard safety devices to be made available. … More than 2 million passengers are carried on Gulf of Mexico oil industry operations alone.”

The NTSB for years has pushed for similar improvements to the nation’s fleet of emergency medical helicopters.

At the end of last year, the deadliest ever for EMS helicopter flights, the NTSB placed medical helicopter safety on its list of top priorities.

It reiterated calls for the requirement of terrain warning systems and stricter rules for flights carrying only medical personnel without a patient. Officials have argued that many recent deaths, including some of the 28 in 2008, could have been prevented by adopting their recommendations.

Addressing accidents

This week, the safety board will hold public hearings on medical helicopter operations during which pilots, medical personnel and operators will testify. Board members hope to highlight what they have called an “alarming rise” in EMS helicopter accidents.

The board has been equally concerned with flights to oil rigs, and plans for new technology have followed.

The FAA, as part of a larger plan to transition air traffic control systems from radar to satellite, has begun installing hardware needed to track flights in the Gulf. The satellite-based technology is expected to provide better information on their location and the weather conditions.

The majority of helicopter and platform operators have agreed to participate in the transition, and air traffic controllers are expected to begin directing traffic with the equipment late this year.

Parts of Alaska already have begun using the satellite tracking and, according to the FAA, have cut their accident rate in half.

The NTSB’s push for terrain warning systems has yet to prompt change. In 2006, the FAA began setting standards for such systems, which would be used in helicopters that ferry oil-rig workers as well as air ambulances.

Updating technology

Some operators have installed warning systems voluntarily. PHI Inc., the company that operated the doomed flight that crashed Jan. 4, had installed an enhanced ground proximity warning system on that helicopter, but NTSB officials don’t know whether it was in use or what may have caused the crash.

The NTSB preliminary report describes good weather, with limited clouds, little wind and good visibility. Crews recovered a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder, which will be examined in the investigation. PHI officials did not return calls seeking comment. The company operates a fleet of helicopters that ferry workers to oil platforms. It also has a number of air ambulances.

In June, one of its emergency medical helicopters crashed in the Sam Houston National Forest while transporting a patient from Huntsville. Everyone aboard died — the patient, pilot, paramedic and the nurse. Investigators found that crash occurred because of the “pilot’s failure to identify and arrest the helicopter’s descent in … dark night conditions, low clouds and fog.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Helicopters are critical to getting workers to oil exploration jobs in the Gulf of Mexico.

9,000 daily flights

5,500 oil rigs in the Gulf

11 fatal crashes since 2004

38 deaths in those crashes

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metrop...an/6240688.html

[justashooter 430]

I worked for PHI in the mid 80's as a turbine engine fuel systems specialist. My sister's husband works for them to this day. I'm suprised to hear about a Sikorsky going down. Prolly an S-76, a very reliable bird, in general.

In the mid 80's we had a series of crashes involving the Aerospatiale Twin-Star. This bird was a twin engine conversion of the very successful A-Star platform. The twin engine conversion was required by municipalities adopting ordinances prohibiting single engine aircraft. The failure in design that resulted in 7 crashes over 9 months was in the yoke that tied the twin engines to the rotor. This part was not needed in the original single engine design. The yoke was eventually upgraded, but not before more than a dozen men died.

Spooky going into the insurance hangar at night to harvest a usable component from a ship in which men had died.

[peejay 327]

I worked for PHI in the mid 80's as a turbine engine fuel systems specialist. My sister's husband works for them to this day. I'm suprised to hear about a Sikorsky going down. Prolly an S-76, a very reliable bird, in general.

In the mid 80's we had a series of crashes involving the Aerospatiale Twin-Star. This bird was a twin engine conversion of the very successful A-Star platform. The twin engine conversion was required by municipalities adopting ordinances prohibiting single engine aircraft. The failure in design that resulted in 7 crashes over 9 months was in the yoke that tied the twin engines to the rotor. This part was not needed in the original single engine design. The yoke was eventually upgraded, but not before more than a dozen men died.

Spooky going into the insurance hangar at night to harvest a usable component from a ship in which men had died.

We knicknamed the Twin-Star and A-Star the Falling-Star due to it's record.

There is a helicopter company that serves the Gulf of Mexico offshore named Rotorcraft. The offshore workers knicknamed it Rotorcrash after several high profile accidents.

Just a little oilfield humor. Unfortunately this stuff is serious. I've been working offshore for about 25 years and have logged thousands of hours traveling to work on various types of helicopters owned by several helicopter leasing companies. I've flown on PHI many times.

A little known fact is that Kris Kristofferson was a US Army trained helicopter pilot and worked at PHI in the 1970's flying offshore to the rigs before breaking into the Nashville music scene and eventual movie and TV acting. I never flew with him, but I used to hear some of the old timers talk about working with him in south Louisiana.