Robert Decker. — Photo by Joe Gibbons/The Telegram

“I will not be flying offshore anymore. But others continue to do it every day and they deserve to be able to do it safely,” Robert Decker read in a prepared statement at the inquiry into offshore helicopter safety in St. John’s this morning.
“The best way to keep every offshore worker safe is to keep every helicopter in the air where it belongs. Safety starts with the helicopter, and everything else is secondary.”
Decker said he doesn’t know what he can say to family members of the 17 people who died in the March 12 crash of Cougar Helicopters’ Flight 491, other than to tell his story as he lived it.
“What I do know is that I became incredibly close to losing my life also,” Decker said. “It could have been just as easily someone else who survived.”
Decker is the sole survivor of the crash of the Sikorsky S-92A helicopter that claimed the lives of 17 people. He began his testimony this morning. Cougar Helicopters’ Flight 491 was heading to the Hibernia and White Rose oilfields when it ran into trouble.
Also in the prepared statement, Decker outlined a number of things that may have contributed to his survival, including his previous experience in boating.
“I was relatively young and fit. I braced myself against the seat in front of me which reduced the force against my chest that might have left me with a little more air in my lungs,” he said. “When I regained consciousness, I knew I had to stay calm and didn’t panic. I was able to concentrate on getting out of the helicopter and to the surface as quickly as possible.”
Decker said he was sailing boats, mostly on Conception Bay, since he was young and taught sailing at the yacht club. He said he was thrown into the cold sea many times from an overturned boat over the years. The experience meant that when the helicopter filled with icy cold water, he could act instinctively.
“It was like a reflex to take a breath and to hold it and to stay calm until I could get to the surface,” he said.
Decker said he was lucky to be sitting next to a window and the helicopter sank port-side down, while he was on the starboard side. The window was open above him and when he released his seatbelt, the buoyancy of the survival suit helped carry him through the window.
“Every second counted and small things like that helped,” he said.
Decker stressed that good training to escape a potential helicopter crash, having good survival suits and having search and rescue capacity nearby are very important to people surviving crashes.
“As good as the training is, a couple of controlled immersions in the pool every year is not enough to allow instinctive reactions to give them a chance to escape a helicopter crash like Cougar Helicopters’ Flight 491.”