By Tife Owolabi
YENAGOA (Reuters) -At least three people died when a helicopter crashed in Nigeria on its way to an offshore oil production facility on Thursday, the state-owned oil firm NNPC said.
The helicopter, operated by East Winds Aviation, lost contact while flying from Port Harcourt to the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Antan oil production facility, NNPC said in a statement.
It was carrying eight people, NNPC added, six passengers and two crew members.
Search and rescue efforts were underway, and aviation authorities were investigating the cause of the incident, NNPC spokesperson Olufemi Soneye said in a statement.
Nigeria’s aviation ministry said in a statement that the Sikorsky SK76 helicopter “ditched into the waters near Bonny Finima in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“While no emergency locator transmitter signal was received, manual efforts to plot the location of the accident are underway, and all available resources including the military and low-flying aircraft have been deployed to assist in locating and rescuing any survivors,” said Odutayo Oluseyi, a spokesperson for the aviation ministry.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has had poor air safety record in the past but has seen improvements in safety standards in recent years.
(Reporting by Tife Owolabi in Yenagoa; Writing by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Mark Porter)
