Oil and Gas People has been sent these pictures of a Bristows technician being winched onto the Helideck of the Captian WPP in the North Sea.

The technician was sent to repair a crew change Helicopter that was unable to fly due to a warning light that had flashed on and off while the Helicopter was on approach to the Captain WPP on Saturday.

The S-92 Helicopter is believed to have had a faulty warning light but safety procedures prevented it from flying until it had been inspected by a technician. Fog prevented a Technician being flown out until Monday so the Helicopters crew and those due to crew change onshore had to spend 2 unscheduled nights onboard.

A Bristow Engineer is lowered onto the Captain WPP

A Super Puma EC225 came to the rescue on Monday when a technician was finally able to be winched down to repair the fault.

Broken down Helicopters on the Helideck can be a nightmare for Offshore Installations as most, if not all Safety Cases, have Helicopter evacuation as a primary way off of the Installation in an Emergency.

A Bristow Helicopters spokesperson stated: "Bristow Helicopters Ltd can confirm that one of its S-92 helicopters was shut down on an offshore installation on Saturday, 4 July, as a precautionary measure following an intermittent warning light indication whilst on approach to the offshore installation." 

"Bristow’s policy, in the interests of safety, is always to carry out maintenance checks prior to further flight in such circumstances.

"Since the weather conditions were unsuitable over the weekend to safely conduct winching operations to the installation, Bristow elected to wait until there was an improvement in the weather before carrying out this operation.

"Following functional tests the aircraft was declared serviceable and has since returned to normal service.

Flight safety is Bristow’s first priority."

A video of a Bristow's Maintenance Engineer being lowered to the platform of the Captain FPSO has been uploaded to YouTube and can be seen below - this incident happened within the last month, but shows a very similar situation to the one that has happened on the Captain WPP this week.

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