She remembered asking people on the scene what was burning her. She was told it was aviation fluid.
Trapped and injured, she asked where her son was. She was told he was safe.
“At this time I was just so helpless under the helicopter,” she told the court.
The mother remembered how she had been stuck for 30 minutes, and the moment firefighters arrived and began cutting the sides of the helicopter.
The Sea World helicopters after one crashed to the ground and the other landed.Credit: AAP
Sergeant Justin Dunn was one of the first on the scene for Gold Coast water police. He told the court how he saw Jenkinson, and there were no signs of life.
He then walked around the aircraft, and saw Mr Hughes could not be saved. A member of the public was performing CPR on Ms Hughes and Tadros. Both women were unable to be saved.
Dunn says he saw Tadros’ son, Nicholas, being treated by a member of the public, and he was conscious in a recovery position.
As Dunn approached the rear of the aircraft, which he says was a mangled wreck, he saw someone – de Silva – was trapped under the frame.
“I crawled in under the air frame. I introduced myself to Winnie and I told her we’d help her and help was on the way. At that stage there was a lot of fuel coming down over the top of both of us,” he told the court.
Dunn said water was being poured over the aircraft. “It was extremely hot underneath,” he recalled. He was under the aircraft for seven minutes before he exited.
Another surviving passenger on board James’ helicopter, Jesse Maya, told the court the crash had been a big blur for him.
An excerpt of video from one of the helicopters shows the other helicopter above the helipad 10 seconds before passengers braced for impact.
“I don’t know how I got out of the helicopter,” he told the court.
Maya had recorded the moments before the crash. He told police that he believed he started telling the pilot “helicopter, helicopter!” as Jenkinson’s chopper approached.
He says he could not remember if he was yelling or saying it.
Footage of the final seconds before the two helicopters crashed emerged in the days after the incident, showing one helicopter taking off and heading towards the other.
Several family members in the court watched the footage on Monday morning, which showed a passenger in the back seat of one of the helicopters, flown by James, tapping the pilot on the shoulder several times to alert him to the nearby helicopter.
The videos then showed to the court depicted the helicopters colliding, before James was able to gain control of his helicopter and land on a sandbar.
James died last year from cancer.
The ATSB said a number of passengers were ejected from their seatbelts during the crash and if the seatbelts had been properly fitted, it might have led to more survivability.
In opening the inquest, counsel assisting Ian Harvey told the court both pilots did not see each other before the crash.
Ash Jenkinson with his fiancee Kosha.
He said the fundamental question was how that situation could unfold with two highly experienced pilots.
In the days before Christmas, Jenkinson had flown into a controlled airspace, and he was warned that the helicopter did not have a functioning transponder. The transponder was necessary for air operations to identify the aircraft in the area.
Jenkinson had not known about the non-functioning transponder until he received a warning in the weeks before the new year to have it fixed.
The inquest heard one specific issue the ATSB had focused on in their investigation was the radio communication. The court heard due to faults with Jenkinson’s radio, a taxi call likely made from him was not transmitted before the crash.
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Harvey said the helipads were used by Sea World Helicopters in one of the busiest air corridors in the country.
Harvey questioned whether the commercial imperative to have new helicopters added to the Sea World fleet before Christmas 2022 overrode full consideration of safety factors, and whether this had brought untoward pressure on Jenkinson, who was the chief pilot.
At the end of his opening address, Harvey, who described the accident as a terrible day of shock and grief, became emotional when speaking of how the families had been impacted.
The inquest is scheduled to run for two weeks, and will hear from 30 witnesses, including surviving passengers, police and Sea World employees.
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