I’LL NEVER FLY AGAIN
Helicopter pilot says his ‘world ended’ in deadly Shetland crash
A HELICOPTER pilot told an inquiry into a crash which killed four oil workers seven years ago that he would ‘never fly again’.
Martin Miglans was at the controls of a Eurocopter Super Puma that plunged into the water while on approach to Shetland’s Sumburgh Airport for a refuelling stop.
Sarah Darnley, 45, from Elgin, Gary McCrossan, 59, from Inverness, Duncan Munro, 46, from Bishop Auckland, and George Allison, 57, from Winchester, all died.
A sworn affidavit from Captain Miglans was read out yesterday on the first day of a virtual inquiry into the disaster.
Captain Miglans said he could only remember a few moments before hitting the water.
His statement said: ‘I remember to about six miles out. Everything after that is blank. The next thing I remember we were flying very low and I could see the water.
‘I tried to keep it up but I can’t. I know we are going into the water. We touched the water. I don’t remember it going fast when we hit the water. I don’t remember any warning lights or buzzers in the cabin saying that we were going below 300ft.
‘I recall we touched the surface of the water. We submerged. The water rose in the cockpit very quickly. I think we rolled to the left. We were then upside down.’
He added: ‘I recall that I was last out of the dinghy and it was getting dark. My mind was shot to pieces. I couldn’t move. I just don’t remember the descent.’
The Super Puma, operated by CHC, was carrying 16 passengers and two crew when the crash happened on August 23, 2013.
Air investigators found the aircraft lost speed suddenly and ditched into the sea around 1.5 nautical miles from the runway.
Rescuers found the ditched helicopter upside down, with the passengers and crew in the water.
Captain Miglans was played a recording of him speaking to copilot Alan Bell but said he had no memory of that conversation.
He told the inquiry: ‘I couldn’t remember that. I was, and remain, completely dissociated from it. I just remember coming out of the cloud and there being water.’
Captain Miglans fractured his spine in the crash and spent two years recovering.
The inquiry was shown a video of him being interviewed by police while being cared for in Aberdeen a month after the accident.
As he told two officers about reciting the safety briefing as the helicopter left the Alwyn North platform he broke down in tears.
Captain Miglans told the inquiry: ‘That is my nightmare to this day.
I couldn’t understand how it could have happened.
‘I have not worked since the accident. I will never fly again.
‘I don’t think I will ever recover from the psychological trauma and the anguish I have lived with every day since this accident.
‘My world ended with that crash. I have not moved on from that cockpit filling up with water. It catches me every day. I see no future. I break down when I think about the accident. I don’t understand how it could’ve happened.’
The inquiry was told Captain
Miglans had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder but had not sought treatment as he ‘doesn’t want sympathy’.
Describing his last recollection to the two police officers, he said: ‘We were good and then we were in the water. It was disbelief, shock, trauma. What has happened? How can we be here?’
He told the officers he managed to escape through the pilot’s door and climbed on to the upsidedown helicopter.
He added: ‘I see the carnage and it’s total and indescribable shock.
Its hell on earth.’ As rescuers arrived he said he remembered thinking: ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be saved.’
In 2016, an Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report found flight instruments were ‘not monitored effectively’ by the pilots in the moments before the crash.
The AAIB concluded that a lack of monitoring meant a reduction in air speed was not noticed by the pilots.
It confirmed it had not found evidence of a technical fault which could have caused the incident.
The report also said the impact with the sea off Sumburgh had been ‘survivable’.
It said one of the dead had been unable to escape, one was incapacitated by a head injury, one drowned and the fourth, who had a chronic heart condition, died in a life raft.
The incident was the fifth helicopter ditching in the North Sea in five years.
The inquiry, before the Sheriff Principal of Grampian, Highland and Islands Derek Pyle, continues.