Bristow Helicopters Flight 56C was a helicopter flight that flew between Aberdeen and the Brae Alpha oil rig in the North Sea. On 19 January 1995, the AS 332L Super Puma

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

operating the route, registered G-TIGK and named ''Cullen'', was struck by lightning. The flight was carrying 16 oil workers from

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

to an oil platform at the Brae oilfield. All 18 people on board survived.

Crew

The commander of the flight was Cedric Roberts (44). He had been with Bristow Helicopters Ltd since 1974. He was a very experienced pilot with more than 9,600 hours of flying time under his belt. The first officer was Lionel Sole (39). Sole had been with Bristow Helicopters Ltd since 1990. He had more than 3,100 hours of flying time to his credit.

Accident

En route, the helicopter ran into poor weather and was then struck by

lightning Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...

. This caused severe damage to the

tail rotor The tail rotor is a smaller rotor mounted vertically or near-vertically at the tail of a traditional single-rotor helicopter, where it rotates to generate a propeller-like horizontal thrust in the same direction as the main rotor's rotation. ...

. Though the helicopter managed to limp for a few more minutes, the tail rotor eventually failed completely when the copilot tried to test if his controls were still working and the pilots were forced to perform an emergency autorotation onto the rough seas. Emergency flotation devices on the helicopter allowed the passengers and crew to be evacuated onto a life raft. Despite the high waves and bad weather, all the people on board the flight were rescued by the ship standby rescue ''Grampian Freedom''. The lightning strike was an isolated one in the storm, and may have been induced by the helicopter flying through the cloud. The accident investigation also revealed potential troubles with the

carbon fibre Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers ( Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon comp ...

composite material A composite or composite material (also composition material) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or physical properties and are merged to create a ...

with brass strip design of the rotors which made the rotorblades prone to explosion and damage from lightning strikes.

In popular culture

The events of Flight 56C were featured in "Helicopter Down", a Season 3 (2005) episode of the Canadian TV series ''

Mayday Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organiz ...

'' (called ''Air Emergency'' and ''Air Disasters'' in the U.S. and ''Air Crash Investigation'' in the UK and elsewhere around the world).

References

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Crew

Accident

In popular culture

See also

References

External links