Lingering question about N.L. crash: victim's brother

The brother of a man who died when Cougar Flight 491 went down in March 2009 is calling on authorities to release recordings of conversations between the two pilots.

"Not all my questionswere answered. I'm still a bit puzzled as to the last minutes of the lives of those individuals," said Harold Mulloney, the brother of 491 passenger Derrick Mullowney.

Mullowney wants to know how the decision totry to reachland rather than ditch in the ocean was made after the pilots had reason to believe the chopper was in trouble. The flight was originally enroute to offshore oil platforms hundreds of kilometres east of St. John's.

"There was a decision made based on a couple of indicators that they should ditch. They were descending to 800 feetto ditch. Somewhere in that piece of time, a decision was made to abort the ditch and head back to shore. That was a wrong decision, obviously, in hindsight," said Mullowney on Wednesday after the TSB released its report on the crash.

"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around howit wasthat decision wasreached."

Mullowney, of Bay Bulls in eastern Newfoundland, believes the recording of the conversation between the pilots might answer his questions about the tragic flight that killed both pilots and 15 offshore oil industry workers.

"Perhaps, if we would at some point get access to the cockpit data recording we might see that, we might have an idea how that decision was achieved. That bothers me a bit. I'm still in the back of my mind wondering: how did that happen?" he said.

But TSBofficials said the recording of what the Cougar pilots said to each other won't be made public.

"TheCanadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act protects the cockpit voice recording of interactions between pilots," said board spokesman John Cottreau.

The TSB's report on the March 12, 2009 crash southeast of St. John's does describe some of the interaction between the pilots.

"Immediately folowing the first indication of the main gearbox problem, the captain's communication style became more directive in nature. As the situation unfolded, the captain did not actively seek out or encourage input from his first officer who had extensive over-water experience and over-water emergency training," said the report.

The board's report went on to say that the captain, Matt Davis, was determined to get passengers safely on land.

"The captain's fixation on reaching shore combined with the first officer's non-assertiveness prevented concerns about the flight's profile from being incorporated into the captain's decision-making process. These breakdowns in crew resource management contributed to the selection of an unsafe flight profile," said the report.

Mullowney said the report doesn't satisfy some of the victims family members.

"That really doesn't give individuals what they want actual word-by-word discussions of what led to that last fatal decision," said Mullowney.