Hours earlier Norwegian investigators said they suspected a technical fault in the crash off Bergen in Norway.
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It was unclear whether the pilots had sent any mayday message before the crash.
A technical error was nearly certainly behind the helicopter crash in which 13 people including a Scot died on Friday, Norway’s Accident Investigation Board has said.
A helicopter carrying 13 offshore workers crashed in Norway last Friday killing all onboard.
The family of a North-east man killed in a helicopter crash today paid tribute to him. “We don’t think it was due to human misinterpretations”, the director of the board’s aviation department, Kaare Halvorsen, told reporters.
The EC225 Super Puma built by Airbus Helicopters crashed Friday on a small island in the archipelago off the western city of Bergen, en route from a North Sea oil platform.
Iain Stuart from Aberdeenshire died along with 10 other passengers and two crew when the aircraft travelling from an oil field crashed off the Norwegian coast on Friday.
The Accident Investigation Board said Tuesday that their probe and visual evidence, including video of the helicopter’s rotor propelling into the sea moments before it crashed, indicated sudden mechanical failure. Police spokesman Per Angel said Saturday they also were working on identifying the 11 victims found so far.
“The helicopter was shipping oil workers to the mainland from Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil’s Gullfaks B oil platform in the North Sea when it fell down”.
Older model Super Pumas have been involved in several accidents in the British oil sector, some of them deadly.
“On Wednesday the helicopter was taken on a test flight, where the warning light reappeared, the helicopter returned to base, changed another component, and the next test drive was completed without any warning light”.
“It’s a deep tragedy that 13 colleagues aren’t returning home, families are hurt and colleagues lose dear friends”, he said.
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After the accident, Norway’s aviation agency banned such Airbus helicopters from flying in Norway or near Norwegian offshore facilities and Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority grounded all commercial passenger flights using the Airbus EC-225LP helicopter except for search-and-rescue operations.
