The three-member independent inquiry committee set up after the ONGC helicopter crash of August 11, 2003 which killed 27 of the 29 people on board has pointed out the helicopter hired from Mesco Airlines was not equipped with automatic emergency inflatable floats, a mandatory requirement in the tender document.
Automatic emergency floats are inflated by two pairs of water-activated switches and it enables the helicopter to stay afloat for a while after it hits the water.
Instead, the ill-fated aircraft had a manually operated system, which needed to be activated by the pilot and is, therefore, subject to pilot error.
Further, the report said, Mesco's confirmation of the presence of automatic floats on its helicopter was untrue. When questioned on this point by the committee at a meeting in Chennai on November 13, 2003, Mesco Airlines CEO Natasha Singh had said that the French manufacturers of the floats, Aerazur, had designated them "automatic". Singh promised to send the reference to this effect from Aerazur, but the committee had observed that she had not done so "even after many reminders".
Singh's confirmed this to <B>Business Standard</B> but said the float manufacturers usually limit their liaison to the aircraft manufacturer rather than the buyer. Although she had sent Aerazur a letter requesting a reference, "they had not responded," she said.
"The provision for automatic inflatable floats appears to have been in all past tender documents as well. Why it was never enforced or has been continuously ignored needs to be gone into," the report commented.
In sum, the committee concluded, :ONGC should have rejected Mesco's bid, as it did not meet the Bid Evaluation Criteria."
The report also suggested that although the Russian-manufactured MI-172 is a "proven, robust helicopter", it was operating in a "sea state" - a scale that categorises the force of the sea by wave height - that was beyond its capabilities on the day of the crash.
However, "ONGC does not build-in the requirement of sea state in the specifications for the helicopters that it hires for offshore operations," the report observed.
The helicopter was hired from Mesco on call out or stand-by duty. However, the report said, "It appears that the Mesco helicopter was used more as a regular charter than as a Call Out."
In fact, "it transpired that the Mesco aircraft was utilised at (an) intensity 8 time more than what was forecast and practically as a regular charter."
Further, during the time the Mesco helicopter was in operation, "the record clearly shows that the daily indents on PHHL [government-owned Pawan Hans Helicopter Ltd] for its regular charter dropped during Mesco's tenure of the Call Out".
The anomaly here arises from the fact that among the reasons cited by ONGC's deputy general manager (logistics) for hiring other helicopters was the erratic availability of PHHL's MI-172 on regular charter and its inability to provide an MI-172 for call out.
But, the report pointed out, "The demand for sorties from PHHL declined 30 % from 2.1 per day in the period prior to hiring the Mesco Call Out to 1.5 when the Mesco aircraft was in operation and was again restored to 2.1 per day after the accident."
The report did concede that "while the Mesco helicopter was hired far in excess of estimates, the performance of the MI-172 of PHHL has continuously deteriorated and could have induced increased recourse to Mesco in some measure."
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