An amateur video has emerged apparently showing the immediate aftermath of the deadly helicopter crash that claimed 13 lives off Norway last week.
In the brief video, which was posted on video-sharing site YouTube on 29 April, a man’s voice can be heard speaking in Norwegian describing the scene of what appears to be a helicopter’s rotor blades spinning through the air without a fuselage attached.
The camera then pans to a black plume of smoke behind a hillside, presumably from the wreckage of the CHC-owned Airbus EC225 Super Puma, which crashed on Friday at Turoy, near the city of Bergen.
All 13 people on board the Statoil-operated aircraft were killed, including 11 offshore oil workers and two pilots.Airbus has since grounded all EC225 Super Puma models as it looks into the accident, which follows a number of other fatal incidents involving that type of helicopter. UK and Norwegian authorities had already banned Airbus EC225 Super Puma type from flying.
Shortly after the accident, a petition on Change.org was posted calling for the Airbus EC225 Super Puma “to be permanently removed from service as its been involved in one incident too many”.
“Failure to do this we feel will result in more needless deaths,” the petition states.
As of Monday evening in Norway, more than 15,000 people had signed the petition.
It has also now emerged that the same helicopter involved in the latest crash was forced to abort an offshore trip three days earlier to Statoil’s Oseberg East platform.
Friday’s flight HKS 241 was en route from Statoil’s Gullfaks B facility in the North Sea to Flesland Airport in Bergen when it went down.
The names of most of the dead were released on Monday.
The named victims were mostly Norwegian nationals. One was from the UK and and another was from Italy.
