Helicopter crashes in Baltic Sea

A Finnish helicopter with 12 passengers and two crew crashed into the Baltic Sea off Estonia yesterday and Estonian officials said all on board were believed dead.

The helicopter, on a scheduled commercial flight to Helsinki from the Estonian capital Tallinn, crashed near the Baltic island of Naissaar three minutes after take-off, officials said.

Rescue helicopters, boats and divers from Estonia and Finland found debris from the helicopter but had not yet recovered those on board - six Finnish passengers and the two Finnish crew, four Estonians and two Americans.

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip told a news conference in Tallinn there was not enough information to hand about the fate of the 14 on board, "but there is no hope".

Rein Porro, deputy director of Estonia's civil aviation authority called it the worst civil aviation accident in Estonia's history.

"They are believed dead. Typically people cannot survive a crash like this. The helicopter dived very quickly," he said by phone from Tallinn.

Estonian officials said the helicopter had sunk, with the 14 still inside, in water about 60 metres deep.

"Helicopter remains have been found," said Finnish foreign ministry official Pekka Hyvonen. "For the time being, no people have been found."

Finnish police said forensic experts were being sent to Estonia to help identify any of those on board the Sikorsky S-76.

Some ferries between Tallinn and Helsinki had earlier been cancelled due to storm warnings which followed heavy weather and gales which swept up the Baltic on Tuesday evening.

But Copterline, the helicopter's owner, ruled out poor weather as a factor in the crash.

"The helicopter was technically in very good shape. We do not know of any technical or weather-related issues that could have caused problems," chief executive Kari Ljungberg told a news conference. Copterline flies the 18-minute hop between Tallinn and Helsinki 28 times a day.

Sikorsky helicopters are made by a unit of the US company United Technologies Corp.