Shortly after midnight on 02 July 1999, a Eurocopter Dauphin search and rescue helicopter operated by the Irish Air Corps crashed into the sand dunes behind Tramore beach in County Waterford while returning from a mission.

[1] The helicopter had attempted to land at its base in nearby Waterford Airport, but was unable to due to heavy fog.

[2][3] Thursday 01 July 1999 was the first day that a 24-hour helicopter search and rescue service was provided from Waterford Airport.

Later that afternoon the helicopter completed a training flight at sea, and a brief reconnaissance of the landing facilities at Waterford Regional Hospital.

[5][2] Around 8:00pm that evening, the Realt Or, a 4.5 metre pleasure boat, left from Dungarvan harbour on a fishing trip with 4 men and a young boy aboard.

Below is an extract of the exchanges between the co-ordination centre and Rescue 111:[4]: Annex F MRCC: Helvick Lifeboat has now located the casualty at the following position: 5204.29 and 00729.08, and he is taking him in tow.

Just to let you know.R111: Roger, copied that er … can you see the lights of Tramore at all?Tower: Negative, we can just about hardly see the runway which is a distance of 300 metres from the Tower.Rescue 111 then requested to be released to return to base.

By this point, if the runway lights are not visible the aircraft must abort the landing attempt and initiate the missed approach procedure.

It can make use of the search and rescue modes of the automatic flight control system to maintain an exact height over the sea surface.

At 12:34am the tower informed Rescue 111 that the weather at Casement Aerodrome was clear if the helicopter wanted to divert to Dublin.

The helicopter impacted the top of the sand dunes, travelling at an estimated speed of 60-80 knots[4]: 30  (111-148 km/h) and a heading of 130° (southeast).

The bulb for the bug which was set to 160 feet was recovered, and examination showed that it was illuminated at the time of impact.

This suggests that the crew had failed to locate the beach and were closing the sliding door and turning right to perform a go-around.

This was likely due the fact that the rescue point was near the airport, and that it may have needed to hover over the casualty boat to winch off passengers.

With a full fuel load the aircraft is difficult to maintain in a hover due the lack of reserve power.

An Air Corps Dauphin 3 years earlier had suffered a failure where both valves failed to close after opening.

[4]: App B p3 Due to the limited range of the Dauphin, planning for alternate airports was not generally considered.

The report found that a qualified ATCO or AFISO could have supplied a weather briefing which may have influenced the planning of the mission.