Puma crash was worst UK sea disaster for 20 years

Police and air investigators believe the recorder could be close to the fuselage, which is lying on the seabed 330 feet below the surface. A salvage team from the Ministry of Defence were advising investigators.

The bodies of eight of the 16 men aboard – 14 passengers and two crew - were recovered, but police believe the remaining eight are still inside the wreck. The death toll made the crash the worst offshore disaster since the Piper Alpha explosion which killed 167 men in 1988.

It was the second Super Puma helicopter operated by BP to crash into the North Sea in the past six weeks. The first, on 18 February, ditched in the North Sea 120 miles from Aberdeen but stayed afloat due to the aircraft's airbag safety feature. All 18 people aboard survived. Several flights out of Aberdeen had been cancelled that day due to adverse weather, unlike last Wednesday.

The version of the Super Puma the men were travelling in last week first flew more than 30 years ago, an older model than the one that went down in February.

Despite assurances from the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, that initial evidence suggested the two crashes are not related, the RMT union called for this model to be grounded until the cause of the crash has been identified. The Air Accident Investigations Branch also stressed it was "far too early to speculate" about the reasons for the disaster.

Kieran Daly, executive editor of Flight magazine, said: "It is very unusual for the regulatory authorities to ground a fleet of aircraft because of an unexplained accident." He added that "the important thing to realise about helicopters is that they have unique vulnerabilities that don't exist in conventional, fixed-wing aircraft".

Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, has already raised the possibility of a public inquiry.

Grampian Police named the victims as: Captain Paul Burnham, 31, from Methlick, Aberdeenshire; co-pilot Richard Menzies, 24, of Droitwich Spa, Cheshire (both worked for Bond Offshore Helicopters); Brian Barkley, 30; Vernon Elrick, 41; James Costello, 24; Alex Dallas, 62; Stuart Wood, 27 (all from Aberdeen); Leslie Taylor, 41, of Kintore, Aberdeenshire; Nairn Ferrier, 40, of Dundee; Gareth Hughes, 53, of Angus; David Rae, 63, of Dumfries; Raymond Doyle, 57, of Cumbernauld; James John Edwards, 33, of Liverpool; Nolan Carl Goble, 34, of Norwich; Warren Mitchell, 38, of Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire; and Mihails Zuravskis, 39, of Latvia.

A fellow oil worker, Ian Morrison, would have been among the victims of the crash had he not been asked to work an extra shift just 15 minutes prior to the Super Puma taking off from the Miller oil platform. Mr Morrison said: "I was approached by the rig office and asked if I wanted to stay on for another shift." Agreeing to work on almost certainly saved his life.