Features Procedures Safety & Training
Details emerge regarding crashed Arctic helicopter

Sources close to the crash investigation have helped CBC News piece
together some of what happened on the helicopter's fateful mission.

Marc Thibault, the commanding officer of the coast guard ship Amundsen,
Daniel Dubé, the pilot of the helicopter, and Klaus Hochheim, an Arctic
scientist affiliated with the University of Manitoba, died of
hypothermia on Sept. 9 when their chopper crashed into the Arctic Ocean.
The crash occurred in M'Clure Strait, about 600 kilometres west of
Resolute, while the three men had been on an ice research flight.

All three men managed to get out of the chopper before it sank, but
then the water, which was about 0 C, began taking its icy death grip.

Full immersion suits are designed to protect the wearer from cold
water, but only if they are fully zipped up. Dubé’s body was found with
the suit only partially zipped up. Pilots often fly with the suits
partly open because they get warm.

Thibeault and Hochheim both had different suits on, but not the kind that would provide full protection against the icy waters.

David Barber, a veteran of Arctic research and a friend of Hochheim,
recognizes the crew was alive for only a brief time in the water.

"The water’s far too cold and…you go through all the stages of
hypothermia very rapidly with death following shortly thereafter because
your internal organs all shut down," he said.

Additionally, two of the men were found in the water without life
jackets, and while the third man did have one on it was not properly
inflated. Coast guard policy is that life jackets must always be worn on
helicopter flights over water.

Prior to the crash, the crew had been working about five kilometres
from the Amundsen, and had radioed to the ship that they were returning.
But the evidence, in addition to the survival suits and life-jackets,
suggests whatever happened to the chopper occurred quickly:

• Dubé had no time or was unable to send a final radio distress call.
• Pictures of the aircraft taken more than 400 metres down on the sea
  floor show the chopper’s front section heavily damaged and the tail
  broken off.
• There is said to be a debris field about 300 metres around the aircraft.
• The helicopter had equipment that could have kept it afloat for
  hours, but pictures indicate that while the switch for the pop-up floats
  was activated, they were not deployed. 
• The aircraft carried a life raft for emergencies, but there’s no evidence it was used.

The wreckage of the helicopter was raised to the surface on
Wednesday. Crash investigators will now begin trying to determine why
the chopper went down, but that could take a year or more, and it won’t
be easy.  The helicopter did not carry flight data recorders. While it
did carry a fixed camera to record the ice probe operation, it is not
clear if it was recording at the time things went terribly wrong.