Shell resumes North Sea helicopter operations

Shell’s North Sea helicopter operations, which were stopped for six weeks after a crash which claimed 11 lives, were resuming today.

Shell decided to suspend the Sikorsky S76 flights operated by the Bristow Helicopters company following the accident, which happened on July 16, 28 miles off Cromer in Norfolk.

“We wanted to stop flights until the investigation was carried out and until we had consulted with our offshore workforce,” a Shell spokesman said.

“We are confident that the aircraft is safe and we are re-starting flights using four helicopters which will be making about 50 flights a week.”

Both crew and all nine passengers died in the crash when the helicopter suffered a “catastrophic” failure caused by the fracture of one of the blades while the aircraft was taking workers from Norwich airport to a gas drilling rig.

An Air Accidents Investigation Branch report last month said there had been an “anomaly” in the manufacturing of one of the blades which had been worsened by a lightning strike in 1999.

In the light of its findings, the AAIB ordered checks of Sikorsky S76s.