A crucial emergency beacon fell from an Air Corps helicopter during an emergency medical mission, sparking a four-day search before it was eventually discovered by a farm worker in a field.
The automatic deployable emergency locator is meant to be used in the event of a crash to help locate a missing aircraft.
However, during the flight last November, technicians discovered the device had vanished following checks at Custume Barracks in Athlone.
While the AW-139 chopper was airborne, a ‘ping’ from the emergency locator was received by the Irish Coast Guard.
They contacted the Air Corps with a location for the beacon, which they said could be accurate up to six metres but was often less precise in practice.
The helicopter was then cleared to return to headquarters at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel in Dublin.
A new chopper was tasked with the medical emergency while a full inspection of the affected aircraft took place.
A safety investigation report said: “There was no damage to the aircraft except for the ELT [emergency locator transmitter] loss.”
A search party involving seven personnel went to a location in the Newcastle area of Dublin to recover the beacon.
Over a four-day period, aerial searches for the emergency locator took place while a local farmer was contacted to see if it had fallen on his land.
The Air Corps even used drones to fly over ploughed fields with no success.
As night fell on 3 December, the search was called off although efforts to pinpoint the beacon’s location continued at Casement Aerodrome.
The accident report said such devices were “ordinarily painted bright red or orange” to make them easy to find but that this one was painted black “in keeping with the tactical livery of service aircraft.”
The locator was eventually found by accident by a local farmhand the same evening.