Chopper trouble for ONGC

Report questions company's helicopter charter policy.

The three-member independent committee set up to investigate the ONGC helicopter crash off the Sagar Kiran rig near Mumbai on August 11, 2003, in which 27 people died, has strongly criticised ONGC for irregularities in chartering the helicopter from Mesco Airlines and the lack of helicopter underwater escape training for personnel working on its rigs.

The report, which is still under wraps, has also censured the civil aviation policy on aircraft charter which limits ONGC's options to government-owned Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd (PHHL) and small domestic operators "of small status" rather than the best available globally.

The report, a copy of which is available with Business Standard, was submitted to the petroleum ministry in March this year, when the National Democratic Alliance was in power.

Mesco's Mi-172 helicopter was chartered on "call out" or stand-by duty in March 2003, owing to Pawan Hans' inability to provide an Mi-172.

The report observed that Mesco was the only other domestic operator to possess an Mi-172 and, therefore, the only one in a position to make an offer. Thus, it said, the "call out award would smack of accepting a single tender".

The report said: "This ought not to have escaped the attention of the officers who processed the tender. As a rule of wisdom, they should have included the alternative of two or three medium helicopters as well in lieu of the Mi-172. "

ONGC has not yet replied to a faxed questionnaire sent on September 2. The report said ONGC's tender committee omitted several important qualifying criteria in the letter the corporation sent to bidders on March 20, 2003 after a pre-bid conference (Pawan Hans was a token bidder who was disqualified early in the proceedings).

The excluded criteria covered the requirement that the helicopter should have more than 400 flying hours life on major components since the last overhaul and a certificate from an authorised agency that the helicopter's instrument flight rating (IFR) equipment was in working order.

When the committee questioned ONGC's chief of offshore logistics on these waivers, he said: "ONGC had no option but to accede to the request of the bidders in the face of limited availability of helicopters in the domestic market and stringent Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) guidelines regarding hiring helicopters from foreign operators."

The report questioned whether the waivers were called for and whether the chief of offshore logistics (COL) was competent to accord these. It observed that the circumstances "raise eyebrows and not without reason in the aftermath of the events".

The helicopter in question had been grounded for legal reasons for six months to March 30, 2003. The report said the helicopter did not have a certificate of airworthiness from the DGCA on the day the bid was submitted (March 27, 2003).

When contacted by Business Standard, Natasha Singh, CEO of Mesco Airlines, denied this, saying the DGCA initially issued a limited authorisation for seven days, after which it was revalidated for a year. The report, however, said the limited certificate of airworthiness was obtained only on March 31, 2003.

The report also said the helicopter lacked a valid IFR certificate. This is usually issued by an "authorised agency" designated by the DGCA. In Mesco's case, the designated DGCA authority was the airline's quality control manager . But the instrument flight rating certificate had been signed by Mesco's engineering-in-charge, who was not an authorised signatory.

Mesco's Singh explained that this had been the practice since 1996, since the engineering-in-charge was directly responsible for the maintenance of the aircraft and therefore in a better position to certify its safety than the quality control manager who was "a commercial person and the DGCA's man on Mesco's board".

The committee also found that the helicopter had less than the stipulated amount of residual flying hours for several key components and that Mesco Airlines had submitted a false certificate to this effect.

"Critical examination of crucial details, gathered from Mesco...confirms that the left engine had 343.07 residual hours and the tail gear box, tail rotor drive shaft and intermediate gear box 266.04 hours as on 31.2.03," the report said.

Singh refuted this, saying the certificate validated the residual hours on the in-house stock of components which were available, not necessarily the components on the helicopter and that this had been standard practice in the past.

The committee was headed by former Petroleum Secretary TS Vijayaraghavan, former Chairman and Managing Director of Oil India SCN Jatar and Pritam Singh, the head of the Gurgaon-based Management Development Institute.