OH-HVF

Information

of the Finnish Frontier Guard (Rajavartiolaitos). The helicopters are mainly used for airborne border surveillance and air rescue. Standing in readiness 24-7 one Super Puma houses a crew of five: one pilot, a co-pilot, a flight engineer and two rescue swimmers.

The fact that the aircraft has two rescue swimmers on board at all times proved very successful during the rescue operation that followed after the well-known Estonia accident on September 28, 1994. The accident occurred in the middle of the night when the ship M/S Estonia, enrooted from Tallinn to Stockholm with 989 passengers onboard, sank in the Baltic Sea. A total of 26 helicopters from 5 different countries came to be involved in the rescue operation.

OH-HVF was a backup aircraft for OH-HVG that evening and was alerted at 03:45, took off at 06:15 and arrived to the scene of accident at 06:45. It didn't manage to find any survivors, but recovered 15 bodies. However its sister, the Super Puma OH-HVG, was able to rescue 44 survivors and pick up 11 bodies during several flights. On its first flight the machine had one rescue swimmer, but he got very physically worn-out and exhausted by the high waves and repeated hoisting. All other Finnish Super Puma flights were carried out with two rescue swimmers. All together the international helicopters resources saved 104 lives and retrieved 98 bodies that evening