Excerpt from the Star
Wednesday January 31, 2007
Copter crashes into sea
By STEPHEN THEN
MIRI: A Super Puma L2 helicopter carrying eight offshore workers and two pilots flying to an oil platform off Bintulu in northern Sarawak crashed into the South China Sea yesterday.
As at 7.30pm, seven passengers and both the pilots of the 16-seater helicopter chartered by Petronas had been rescued.
They got out from the helicopter shortly after it sank, about 40km offshore Bintulu.
A staff member of Petronas Carigali is still missing.
The marine police, police air wing unit, Sarawak Shell and Petronas have launched a search and rescue mission to locate the missing passenger.
Those injured were sent to Bintulu hospital. It is learnt that no one was seriously hurt.
Sources said the helicopter, belonging to Malaysian Helicopter Services, left Miri with 16 people on board for the Block D oil and gas exploration field at 1.08pm yesterday.
Six workers disembarked at platform D35.
At about 2.45pm, while the helicopter was flying to platform
D18, the pilot lost control of the helicopter and it plunged into the sea.
The Department of Civil Aviation immediately alerted Petronas offices in Miri, Bintulu and Kuching after losing contact with the pilot.
Sources said: “When the helicopter crashed into the sea, seven of the workers and the pilots scrambled out before the it sank.”
The Super Puma helicopter is similar to that which crashed offshore Miri two years ago while transporting 13 Sarawak Shell workers.
It is always disheartening to read /hear of choppers crashing, especially when it's ferrying workers to & from the platforms & oil rigs, because I have close relatives and friends who work in the oil companies in Sarawak. Shell, Petronas Dagangan/Carigali. Thank goodness that the cousins/cousins in law that used to go offshore earlier on in their careers now have deskbound jobs but they and a couple of friends still make the occasional trip to the offshore rigs. And of course, the mode of transport is always the chopper. Quite alarming to note too, that this is the 4th incident involving MHS helicopters to date. Prayers and thoughts go out to the victim, that's still missing at sea & the family..
A little update- Sadly the 'missing' victim's body was located still in the chopper, strapped to his seat! Received an email from a friend that " instead of buying or leasing expensive jets, the government should spent the money upgrading the fleet of choppers in this country." How true, there just has been too many accidents to date. Too many lives lost leaving loved ones bereft. A good friend lost his bro in law when the chopper went down on July 12th 2004 in the Highlands. 7 people lost their lives in that incident.Tragic.
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