This article is from page 15 of the 2006-11-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
FATIGUE played a part in an incident in which an off-duty Ryanair pilot crashed a helicopter while taking a family on a pleasure trip, an official investigation has found.
The pilot had already flown the chopper on a return trip from Dublin to West Cork earlier in the day and was due to report for duty in Shannon at 6.15am the next morning.
The Irish Aviation Authority made the findings after an investigation into the crash-landing of the Bell 206B helicopter in a cornfield near Inniskeen, County Monaghan on June 13 2004. On the day, the pilot had expected to go home, but had agreed to fly trips for the sports day at Kilanny because there were so many people queuing for the flights.
A female passenger described how she saw warning lights come in the helicopter before two loud siren sounds and then the engine went quiet. The chopper started wobbling and her children became upset.
The craft was badly damaged in the emergency landing but passengers and the pilot escaped injury. The authority heard that the pilot was just short of his annual flying limit of 900 hours at the time of the accident.
“The wisdom of getting involved with further commercial operations is therefore dubious, particularly when this is done without notifying his prime employer,” the report stated.
The accident report found that the amount of fuel in the helicopter during its final flight was below the minimum required level, a fact the pilot could have established if he had made a calculation based on the number of previous flights carried out.
“The investigation is of the opinion that fatigue may well have blurred the pilot’s judgement and airmanship towards the end of the day,” the report continued.
The pilot, who was not named in the official investigation report, has been identified by a media source as being employed by Ryanair at the time of the accident, although the crash-flight itself had nothing to do with the no-frills airline.