Offshore Industry: North Sea

(asked on 28th October 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many (a) commercial helicopters, (b) helicopter crew and (c) flights were involved in the evacuation of all workers from the Thistle oil platform to the Dunlin Alpha platform in the North Sea on 21 October 2019.


Answered by
Nusrat Ghani Portrait
Nusrat Ghani
Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
This question was answered on 4th November 2019

No commercial helicopters were involved in the evacuation of workers from the Thistle oil platform to Dunlin Alpha platform on 21 October 2019. The HM Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Sumburgh and two Norwegian rescue helicopters were tasked to evacuate all workers.

Each helicopter undertook the evacuation with one duty crew. The HM Coastguard aircraft operates with a crew of four, the Norwegian aircraft operate with a crew of five.

The total number of flights involved in the evacuation was seven, four undertaken by one Norwegian helicopter and three by HM Coastguard. The second Norwegian helicopter required fuel before assisting and was then stood down as the evacuation was complete.

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