Eight individuals have sadly died as a result of an Eastwind Aviation helicopter accident into the Bonny River in Rivers State, according to confirmation from the Rivers State Police Command.
AFRIPOST reported that the helicopter crashed while transporting two crew members and six passengers from Port Harcourt Military Base to the FPSO Nuim Antan offshore platform in Calabar.
According to the Rivers State Police Command, everyone on board the plane is believed to be dead.
According to information provided by Police Public Relations Officer Grace Iringe-Koko, Ifeanyi Udogwu, a worker with Antan Producing Limited, informed the police about the occurrence.
Around 11 a.m., the helicopter, registered under the call sign 5N-BQG (S76C+), took off from the NAF Base in Port Harcourt and crashed close to Antan Producing Limited’s FPSO and Mimbo platform.
To salvage the debris and find all of the people, the Rivers State Police Marine Division is working with other authorities.
Iringe-Koko sent the Command’s sincere sympathies to the families of the victims in her statement.
Three bodies have been found so far, according to Ministry of Aviation spokeswoman Odutayo Oluseyi, who also verified the event. To find the other passengers, search and rescue operations are still underway. According to early reports, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) contracted with the oil personnel on board.
The government claims that the Sikorsky SK76 helicopter, registered 5N-BQG, was en route to the Nuimantan Oil Rig when it went down in the Atlantic Ocean close to Bonny Finima. There was no signal from an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), thus tracking was done by hand.
Resources have been deployed by organisations such as the Nigerian Search and Rescue Unit and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), with low-flying aircraft and military support supporting the effort.
The collision is being investigated by the National Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB).
The NSIB’s Director of Public Affairs and Family Assistance, Mrs Bimbo Oladeji, said in a statement that a manual location search was necessary since the helicopter was flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and failed to send out an ELT signal.
In addition to expressing his sympathy to the impacted families, Director General Captain Alex Badeh Jr. underlined the NSIB’s dedication to identifying the accident’s cause and asked the public to refrain from conjecturing while the inquiry is ongoing.