Auckland Islands helicopter crash: Rescue pilot says finding trio alive like winning the lottery

Wednesday, 24 April 2019

The mood, when Sir Richard 'Hannibal' Hayes took off from Te Anau to look for his mates, was glum but not without hope.

It was about 7.30am on Tuesday and Hayes, a veteran of search and rescue operations with 45 years flying under his belt, had pilot Snow Mullally and water rescue jumper Chris Hughes on board.

Hayes hadn't heard from the crew of his Southern Helicopters BK117 – pilot Andrew Hefford, winch operator Lester Stevens and paramedic John Lambeth – for 15 hours. Hefford and the crew had been on their way to Enderby Island, about 460km south of Bluff, to pick up an injured trawlerman but nothing had been heard since about 8pm on Monday night.

Hayes knew the odds of finding 'my guys alive' were almost zero.

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Sir Richard Hayes at his Sandy Brown hangar taking one of the many calls following his rescue of the three crew of his helicopter that crashed at the Auckland Island.

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'But I never lose hope that I'm going to get a result because I have had results where I have thought the cards were stacked completely against who we were looking for and have had some good finds. I still had hope they had extracted themselves from the aircraft and just didn't have time to get dry bags.'

The dry bags contained provisions and more importantly, locator beacons.

Hayes flew for an hour to an island just off Stewart Island, where his company has a fuel base, and took on another 200 litres of fuel. Then they had to wait.

The rescued crew arrive at Invercargill Airport on Tuesday afternoon.

The skippers of the trawler fleet looking for the lost men were saying a heavy sea fog can come in after the squally conditions of the night. It was no good for flying.

They waited for an hour or two and then the volatile weather in the area cleared. They flew for about 30 minutes before one of the crew spotted orange shapes on a headland of the Auckland Islands called Ross Harbour. First there were two figures and then three as Stevens got up from the ground.

Hayes struggles to describe the feeling.

'Look, we went from a thought process of the worst result you can imagine to an180 degree turn. There they were.

'It was one of the best feelings I have had in my 40 years in the aviation industry. It was absolutely incredible to be able to see the three of them there. We landed and it was a pretty emotional time on the beach I can tell you. My crew and the guys we were picking up. It was unbelievable to see people we thought we wouldn't see standing up again.'

Sir Richard Hayes says the chances of finding 'his guys' were almost zero.

He can't recall what was said in the high excitement but remembers one of the rescued men saying 'the sound of the helicopter was one of the best sounds we have heard for a long time'.

The rescued trio were bruised, sore and still wearing their soaking wet immersion suits. Stephens had facial injuries, Lambeth had a broken wrist and ribs and Hefford had suspected back injuries. Hefford was still in hospital on Wednesday.

'But really pretty good after what they had been through. They were pretty pleased to get to the hut and have a cup of coffee and a sandwich,' Hayes says.

They talked about what happened. The helicopter had been a couple of nautical miles from Enderby Island when something had failed. They hit the water and managed to get out while the helicopter floated for about two minutes and then sank in 12m of clear water. Hayes would later se the white shape under the water.

The crew could see the shore even though it was dark and the sea was calm, he says.

'They could see the cliffs just to the west. They kicked their way to shore.'

The tide was out and big flat tables of rock were exposed. The men fought their way through the kelp and then walked around the coast for several hundred metres to find sanctuary in a stunted rata forest.

They had no matches, no food and no locator beacons. Their personal locator beacons kept in their immersion suits were lost in the crash. Finding a sheltered depression, they used ferns to try to keep the heavy rain off. They tried to attract attention by flicking torches on and off but with no luck.

'It was shocking,' says Hayes, who believes it's the survival story of the decade.

'It's the best one I've heard for a while and I've been to a few. I've been to many many of them and they haven't had such as pleasing outcome as this one.'

Hayes says he hasn't had an accident in 45 years before the crash and never before lost an aircraft or staff member.

'I think we won Lotto [on Tuesday]. We went there expecting the worst and came up with the best.'

Hayes is one of New Zealand's most experienced pilots and is known for his search-and-rescue feats. In 2007, he received the Federation Aeronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship and in the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was promoted to Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.