Survivor’s harrowing story grips chopper crash probe
Tourist Winnie De Silva booked a joyride helicopter flight with her son on a whim.
It was a snap decision that nearly cost him his life.
Moments after the Sea World helicopter took off off Queensland’s Gold Coast, Ms De Silva was screaming for help from the wreckage of the plane as explosive fuel was poured over her head.
“I was on the ground under the helicopter. There were hot machines on my body,” he told an inquest.
“I had people telling me help was on the way.”
His harrowing account of the fatal helicopter crash was heard in a Brisbane courtroom as a three-week inquest began into one of Australia’s worst air disasters.
On January 2, 2023, four people died and nine people were injured when two joy planes crashed outside Sea World.
While visiting the theme park with her nine-year-old son on that fateful day, Ms De Silva had spontaneously bought a ticket for the five-minute flight.
At 1:56 p.m., with the sun shining brightly, he and his son, Leon, boarded a dark-colored helicopter that took off from a helipad just outside Sea World, carrying four other people.
About 25 seconds into the flight, it collided with another Sea World helicopter preparing to return to the helipad.
Ms. De Silva realized something was wrong when debris began flying around the circling helicopter.
“I was holding my son’s hand and he was shaking so bad,” she said.
“The pilot was pressing all the buttons… I was holding my son at the time, I just remember closing my eyes and asking my son to do the same.”
The helicopter carrying Ms De Silva and her son fell 40 meters before hitting the beach and rolling onto its roof.
The terrified mother pinned herself face down and asked the two men what had landed on the side of her head.
“They told me it was aviation fuel. I wanted to pull me out but they said no because I was trapped and injured,” Ms De Silva said.
Local boats came ashore and were able to tell her that her son had survived the crash.
They also tried to clean up the jet fuel that covered it and nearby burning engines.
Firefighters managed to respond to the plane and save Ms. De Silva, but others were not so lucky.
Pilot Ashley Jenkinson, 40, British newlyweds Ronald and Diane Hughes, 65 and 67, and Sydney mother Vanessa Tadros, 36, also died in the crash.
Ms Tadros’s husband, Simon, has attended every day of the inquest so far.
The second helicopter, piloted by Michael James, managed to make an emergency landing on the same beach.
Mr James, who died in 2024 from an unrelated medical condition, was injured, as were nine passengers on both planes.
Sensational videos shot by multiple passengers and played during the investigation showed tourists trying to get the attention of one of the pilots as the two helicopters quickly approached each other.
The lawyer assisting Ian Harvey said: “It is inevitable that neither pilot will see the other pilot’s helicopter.”
“How could this be? They were two experienced pilots in modern, relatively advanced helicopters.”
Police officers, some of whom were off-duty, rushed to the scene, where they encountered a “terrible nightmare.”
Gold Coast Water Police chief Justin Dunn was there minutes after the accident.
“It was absolute chaos,” the acting first sergeant said.
Bystanders tried to resuscitate a woman and administered first aid to an injured young boy.
A young ground crew member broke down in tears after telling Mr Jenkinson he blamed himself for the crash by giving him a “thumbs up” to take off after seeing the skies were clear.
The two Eurocopter EC130 aircraft involved in the accident had just been purchased by Sea World Helicopters, a company that operates independently of the theme park.
“EC130s were shipped before Christmas to be used as a marketing tool,” one pilot told the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
The bureau’s previous research found that the EC130 gave pilots a “clearly more restricted” view of their takeoff path.
As Sea World Helicopters doubled the number of flights during the busy holiday season, pilots were sometimes in the air for more than six hours a day.
However, an experienced pilot told the inquest the helicopter operator was the safest company he had ever worked for.
Coroner Carol Lee will continue to hear evidence Monday as she examines 11 critical issues surrounding the crash, including pilot training, radio communications between planes and precautions that could have prevented a similar disaster.
