Oil and Gas People reported that the helicopter returning from an offshore field was squawking on the emergency frequency 7700 after we received an alert from aircraft monitoring website Flight Radar 24.

Oil and Gas People has been questioning operators over the lack of transparency around RTB incidents after we exclusively revealed that Step Change in safety was failing in their commitment to report each RTB as agreed with the Helicopter Safety Steering Group, set up after previous Super Puma tragedies.

Babcock responded to our request for an update by sending Oil and Gas People a link to the RTB announcement on the Step Change website, the first such announcement to appear on the site in quite some time.

Oil and Gas People hopes that the practice will continue for all RTB incidents so the workforce can start to rebuild confidence in helicopter operators.

The Step Change announcement reads:

“Update on the priority landing of an S-92 helicopter at Aberdeen International Airport on May 16, 2016

“Following the priority landing of an S-92 at Aberdeen International Airport on May 16, 2016, a thorough investigation was carried out by Babcock engineers. This proved the aircraft to be fully operational and it has been cleared to return to service.

“The investigation revealed the issue to be the spurious indication of a cockpit light which illuminated in error. The aircraft’s crew requested the priority landing in accordance with standard operating procedure. The S-92, like all modern aircraft, has multiple layers of redundancy built into the aircraft systems and the aircraft remained safe, fully operational and airworthy throughout.”