A public inquiry into the safety of helicopters that specialize in offshore transportation has heard that changes are planned at a training centre for offshore workers to bring its equipment more in line with the choppers they currently use.

Bob Rutherford, the director of the Offshore Safety and Survival Centre in Foxtrap, near St. John's, testified Monday that the simulator currently used for underwater escape training at the centre was modelled after a helicopter that is much older than the choppers currently used to take workers to and from offshore platforms.

"Basically, this was designed and developed in the 1980s," Rutherford told the inquiry.

The helicopter fuselage that's used for training at the centre is placed in a large water tank where it is turned upside down and submerged, to train offshore workers to escape from a helicopter that has crashed into water.

Rutherford said that simulator is not only older, but it's also different in a number of ways from the Sikorsky S-92, the model of helicopter that crashed in March off the Newfoundland coast while carrying oil workers, killing 17 of 18 people on board.

The windows in the simulator are smaller and significantly lower in the fuselage. Another difference is that and the Sikorsky uses a harness seatbelt that goes over the shoulder and across the lap and is clasped in the centre.

"When our helicopter escape trainer was built, it was more common to have a lap belt, which is what we have in place at the present time," Rutherford said.

Rutherford said the centre is looking at changes that would make its simulator better reflect the helicopters that are used for offshore transportation.

The Sikorsky that crashed March 12 was being operated by Cougar Helicopters. Most of its occupants were headed to an oilfield operated by Calgary-based Husky Energy.

The inquiry, overseen by former Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court judge Robert Wells, was ordered by the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board.

Public hearings, Hearings began in mid-October.