One year on

The flight which ended in tragedy - Article from the Blackpool Gazette on 27 December 2007

IT should have been another routine flight – one of dozens which happen every day in the Irish Sea. A three-minute hop from rig to rig, dropping off crew members and taking others home for New Year.

But at just after 6pm on December 27 last year, the Eurocopter Dauphin AS365N on which the men were flying plunged into the cold waters sparking one of the most dramatic, but unfortunately fruitless, rescue missions the Fylde coast has ever seen.

Lifeboat crews from Fleetwood and Lytham were joined by colleagues from Barrow as well as RAF Sea King crews to scour the waters of Morecambe Bay for the men in the hope they had survived the impact.

Doomed

Despite some crew members spending more than 24 hours at sea, all they were able to bring ashore were the bodies of those onboard and shattered parts of the doomed chopper.

An hour before the crash, the helicopter, piloted by North Shore man Steve Potton and owned by CHC Scotia, had left the offshore terminal at Blackpool Airport with plans filed to visit half a dozen gas rigs.

The journey had been uneventful until the last landing of the evening. As the aircraft approached the North Morecambe gasfield rig, the helicopter, controlled by Preston-based co-pilot Simon Foddering, began to go out of control. Mr Foddering decided to abort the landing but the helicopter continued to lose altitude and roll to the right.

Eyewitnesses, waiting on the helipad, said the aircraft appeared to be making a sudden turn to the right. As the situation became more serious, Mr Foddering called on Captain Potton, a man with decades of experience piloting rig helicopters, to take control. In the last few seconds he was able to level the chopper but could not halt the descent.

The aircraft hit the water at an estimated speed of more than 140mph, breaking up on impact. According to air crash investigators, those on board would have been killed instantly.

Almost immediately the alarm was raised.

RAF search and rescue helicopters were dispatched from their base in North Wales and Fylde coast lifeboat crews were scrambled. It was Fleetwood's lifeboatmen who took the lead, taking command of the search site, 27 miles off the Blackpool coast. They returned to port early the next morning to refuel the lifeboat, bringing back with them evidence of just how massive the impact had been.

Part of the helicopter nose cone, a door panel and a section of seating were among the items of wreckage brought ashore. As the parts were handed over to police, lifeboat crew members headed back to the rigs, to continue the hunt for those who had been onboard.

By the end of the day six out of seven bodies had been found. Leslie Ahmed, Simon Foddering, Alfred Neasham, Steve Potton, John Shaw, and Robert Warburton were all brought ashore. But as the weather worsened in the Irish Sea in the following days, it became apparent the seventh victim, rig worker Keith Smith, was lost at sea.

In the days which followed, investigations into the crash began. Initial speculation centred on mechanical failure, with rumours that a broken component on the 1985-built aircraft had caused the crash.

Report

However, this line of questioning was all but dismissed in the first official report, published in January by the air accident investigation branch. Their experts concluded a fault had not occurred on any flight critical system.

Investigations continue to try to find out the cause, but there is no doubting the heroic role played by 52-year-old Blackpool pilot Steve Potton in the last seconds.

Since the accident, more than £70,000 has been raised for charities and organisations involved in the search and rescue operations, in memory of the men who died, including Mr Potton.