A report into the Rescue 116 tragedy has found databases didn’t detect the island which the crew crashed into.Four members of the Irish Coast Guard lost their lives in the tragedy off the Mayo coast in March 2017.Captain Dara Fitzpatrick, Captain Mark Duffy, winch operator Paul Ormsby and winchman Ciaran Smith died in the crash.Stephanie Rohan has been looking at the report which has just been published:
"This report contains harrowing details of the final moments of Rescue 116. Where the winch man can be heard announcing come right now, come right, come right. The investigations found the helicopter was flying at 200 feet in poor weather just before 1am and were unaware that a 282 foot obstacle namely Black Rock Island was on the flight path. It says contributed causes to the crash was that neither their databases nor imagery indicated the presence of Black Rock. The bodies of Dara Fitzpatrick and Mark Duffy were recovered, but the bodies of Paul Ormsby and Ciarán Smith remain lost at sea."
The 350-page report follows the most detailed inquiry ever conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) and comes over four and a half years after the crash.
Some other contributory factors which were also named in the report include:
- "Crew members’ likely hours of wakefulness at the time of the accident";
- "Serious and important" weaknesses with how the helicopter operator, CHC Ireland, managed route testing and risk mitigation;
- "Confusion at the State level" regarding oversight of search and rescue operations;
