No distress signal from crashed Norwegian helicopter

Norwegian authorities said today there was no indication that a helicopter that crashed last week killing all 13 aboard had sent a distress signal.
"We are not aware of any distress signal sent by the helicopter," an official from the Norwegian accident investigation board, Koare Halvorsen, told AFP.
"We don't hear anything like that" on the voice recorder box, one of the chopper's two black boxes, he said.
The EC225 Super Puma built by Airbus Helicopters crashed Friday on a small island in the archipelago off the western city of Bergen, en route from a North Sea oil platform.
Thirteen people were killed, including 11 Norwegians, one Briton and one Italian.

It was the deadliest helicopter crash in Norway since 1978 when a Sikorsky S61 crashed at sea, killing 18 people.

The cause of Friday's accident was not yet known, but a technical problem appeared to be the most likely reason.
Eyewitness accounts and footage captured on cell phones indicate that the rotor detached just before the crash.
The contents of the black boxes, which have been recovered and decrypted, were "of good quality" and were to be analysed in Norway, the accident investigation board said.
It was being assisted by experts from France's Safety Investigation Bureau and the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch.

Super Pumas have been involved in several accidents in the British oil sector, some of them deadly. The most serious dates back to 2009 when a helicopter crashed off of Scotland, killing its 16 occupants.
The Norway crash was, however, the first fatal accident involving an EC225.
On Friday, Norwegian and British authorities announced they were grounding the EC225 until further notice.