10 August 2005 helicopter crash near Tallinn

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On August 10, 2005, a Sikorsky S-76C+ helicopter of Copterline en route to Helsinki, Finland crashed into the sea near Tallinn, Estonia (59°32.5529′N 024°43.8754′E) three to four minutes after taking off. On board were two Finnish crew members and 12 passengers: six Finns, four Estonians and two Americans. There were no survivors. The Sikorsky S-76C+ has emergency pontoons for water landings but they were not deployed, and no distress signals were heard before the crash, although it later emerged that the pilots had tried to send an emergency message shortly before the crash.

Rescuers reached the site in less than 10 minutes to find just one main rotor blade and an oil slick on the water. The wreckage of the helicopter itself was located by sonar operators on the Estonian Maritime Administration vessel Eva-320, who indicated that the aircraft was intact at a depth of roughly 43 meters. Two Estonian deep-sea divers following an earlier unmanned robotic vehicle reported that the bodies of the passengers were inside the craft. Thirteen bodies were retrieved, with one pilot missing. The recovery mission was hindered by rough weather conditions. The wreckage of the aircraft was lifted on August 13, 2005 and transported to Tallinn for investigation. The missing pilot was not found in the initial searches performed by the Estonian and Finnish authorities, but the body was finally located on August 25 and retrieved by volunteer divers some distance away from the accident site. The post mortem indicated that the victims died from drowning.

The Estonian authorities denied sending the flight data recorder of the helicopter to the United States because the aircraft was manufactured there, thus possibly creating a conflict of interest. The technical investigation was in fact performed in the United Kingdom. The voice recording indicated that the pilots realized that something was wrong only 35 seconds before the helicopter hit the sea, and that they did attempt to send a Mayday message.

The accident investigation board published a preliminary report on September 14, 2005, in which they ruled out most possibilities of physical damage before the helicopter hit water, including sabotage and collision with a flock of birds. As the helicopter was manufactured in the United States, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has taken part into the investigation. In November 2005 NTSB issued an "urgent" recommendation to the FAA that it require all S-76 operators to carry out "immediate visual and laboratory examinations" of main rotor servos for plasma flakes and other contamination. The helicopter manufacturer, Sikorsky Aircraft, rejected these findings, saying it and servo manufacturer HR Textron "do not agree that the servo caused the mishap". In December 2005 the company however issued an all-operators letter recommending that operators carry out internal leakage tests of all S-76 main rotor servos, at the same time emphasizing that testing with an intentionally degraded servo "has not identified any safety of flight issues".

As of October 16, 2006, the official inquiry is still going on. Copterline and Sikorsky Aircraft are in talks about how to divide damages arising from the crash, yet the companies reportedly have sharply differing views on the cause of the accident.

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