On the eve of the world”™s most prestigious air show last week, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. was hit with multiple lawsuits over the crash in 2006 of a fire-prevention helicopter off the Canary Islands, killing six people.
Sikorsky is the largest employer in Fairfield County with 8,300 employees at last report at its Stratford headquarters and nearby facilities. The company is a subsidiary of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., the largest company in Connecticut.
The estates of four Spaniards killed in the crash sued Sikorsky for an unspecified amount, attempting to hold it responsible for the crash of the company”™s S-61N, a civil aviation version of its Sea King military helicopter.
Also suing is Banco Vitalicio, which paid $5 million at today”™s exchange rate to cover an insurance claim by the doomed helicopter”™s operator Helicsa-Helicopteros, as well as $850,000 to the estates of four victims.
Helicsa has since merged into the air charter company known as Grupo Inaer.
The plaintiffs claim that after a warning light illuminated during a July 8, 2006 flight, indicating possible internal corrosion in a main rotor blade, the helicopter”™s crew followed procedures in a Sikorsky manual for dealing with such a problem in midair.
Just the day before the same warning had flashed, and maintenance crews had replaced an O-ring to stop a leak at the base of the filler valve on one of the helicopter”™s rotors.
The helicopter crashed during an hour-long flight to a maintenance facility on a nearby island.
The plaintiffs said Sikorsky subsequently changed its manuals to advise pilots to land immediately if the signal lit.
The Canary Islands crash has been the only fatal civil aviation crash involving a Sikorsky helicopter since August 2005, when a passenger shuttle flown by Copterline Oy crashed into the Baltic Sea, killing 14 people including two U.S. citizens.
Estonian investigators blamed the crash on a coating that flaked off into a servo motor.
As part of lawsuits filed by victims”™ kin seeking $120 million, Sikorsky representatives were scheduled to view the crash wreckage later this month in Estonia, along with the plaintiffs”™ legal team. The judge hearing the case also agreed to visit Sikorsky headquarters in Stratford this month to listen to a cockpit voice recording that was retrieved.
The Copterline crash was the worst civil accident involving a Sikorsky helicopter since July 1983, when 20 people died after a British Airways flight servicing oil platforms crashed off the Isles of Scilly.
That flight, involving a previous version of the S-61N involved in the Canary Islands crash, was blamed on fog.
Since the Canary Islands accident, civil pilots have crashed a dozen Sikorsky helicopters during that nearly three-year stretch without loss of life.
Those accidents include an incident May 29 in Grand Rapids, Mich., when a pilot of a Sikorsky S-76A reported hearing a “pop” upon takeoff before the helicopter slammed into a nearby building.
The pilot and an FAA inspector aboard survived the crash.
