BRITAIN:Air accident investigators are searching for the black box data recorder of an offshore gas company's shuttle helicopter which inexplicably reared out of a normal approach run to a rig and plunged into the Irish Sea on Wednesday night.
Two pilots were killed with four staff heading home from the Christmas shift on the Morecambe Bay gas field run by the Centrica gas company, 25 miles off Blackpool. A seventh gas worker on the routine flight by a Eurocopter AS365N Dauphin is missing and police warned that the chances of survival in the icy water for so long were "very slim".
There was no emergency call from the helicopter whose last moments were seen clearly by staff waiting 500 yards away for it to land on the third of three rigs before returning to its base at Blackpool airport.
Staff using the helicopters are given safety training and have to wear survival suits and carry respirators. But the speed of the crash is thought to have made it virtually impossible for anyone to leave the cramped cabin before the helicopter sank.
Lancashire police and coastguards said the weather was normal and the flight had followed usual patterns on its collect-and-drop-off tour of the gas field.
Keith Mullett of the helicopter service CHC Scotia said both pilots were experienced and capable and it was too early to speculate about what had happened.
Sam Laidlaw of Centrica told a media conference at Blackpool police station that the tragedy was the company's first significant incident on the Morecambe Bay field since drilling started 21 years ago.