All 19 people on board a helicopter that ditched in the North Sea are safe and well and have returned to land, the coastguard has said.
The CHC helicopter was carrying an oil crew from Aberdeen to a rig 86 miles north-west of Shetland when it ditched at around 3.30pm today.
Three RNLI lifeboats were launched from Kirkwall in Orkney and Aith and Lerwick in Shetland to go to the aid of the 17 passengers and two crew.
When they arrived all 19 had already been taken from their liferaft by a fast rescue craft launched from the the Nord Nightingale vessel, which was close to the scene, about 32 miles south-west of Shetland. They were taken back to the tanker and flown by RAF and Bond rescue helicopters to Kirkwall in Orkney. No one was injured in the incident.
First Minister Alex Salmond said he hopes an investigation into the cause will get to the facts quickly so other such incident can be avoided.
The EC225 Super Puma helicopter remains in the water and Lerwick lifeboat is still at the scene.
In May all 14 passengers and crew members on a Super Puma helicopter were rescued after it ditched about 30 miles off the coast of Aberdeen. It was on a scheduled flight from Aberdeen Airport to a platform in the North Sea at the time.
Earlier 16 people died when a Super Puma plunged into the sea. Its gearbox failed while carrying the men to Aberdeen. The Bond-operated helicopter was returning from the BP Miller platform when it went down off the Aberdeenshire coast on April 1st, 2009.
This happened about six weeks after another Bond Super Puma with 18 people on board ditched in the North Sea as it approached a production platform owned by BP. Everyone survived that incident.
The Helicopter Safety Steering Group set up in 2009 will hold a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the latest incident and a union official wants operators to provide more assurances to offshore workers that their helicopters are safe.
RMT offshore organiser Jake Molloy said: “There are any number of potentials which could have forced the helicopter down to the sea, varying between bird strikes, lightning - there could be any number of things.
“But the primary issue is for the helicopter operators, in this case CHC, to provide information as soon as possible about what forced this aircraft down, as it’s the fourth event involving the EC Puma-type aircraft."
PA