The lone survivor of a horrific helicopter crash off of Newfoundland last March says he will never fly offshore again.

"I will not be flying offshore anymore, but others continue to do it everyday and they deserve to be able to do it safely," Robert Decker told an inquiry in St. John's into the crash of Cougar Flight 491.

Decker described the harrowing ordeal for the first time publicly, saying he braced against the seat in front of him, unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed through an empty window to save himself after the chopper crashed into the icy Atlantic water.

Cougar Flight 491 was ferrying offshore oil workers between St. John's, N.L., and two offshore rigs when it crashed on Mar. 12 after reporting mechanical problems.

Decker said he fell asleep during the flight. When he was nudged awake, he heard the pilot telling passengers there was a serious problem.

"They said there was a major technical problem. They asked everyone to don their survival suits, and we were headed to the closest land," he said.

"They called 'ditch' three times, 'ditch, ditch, ditch', it was almost as the helicopter was crashing."

Decker described the helicopter as flying erratically in the moments before it plummeted from the sky and crashed into the water. The impact knocked out the window he was sitting beside, allowing him to escape while 17 others on board the aircraft perished.

He said he doesn't remember the impact, only its aftermath.

"It was instantly filled with water," he said of the helicopter. "It was kind of as if it was sinking the same way it was dropping through the sky."

After swimming to the surface from the sinking aircraft, Decker bobbed in a survival suit in the frigid North Atlantic for some time.

He was eventually plucked from the ocean by a search and rescue helicopter. By then his legs, hands and feet had gone numb because of the cold water that had leaked into his survival suit, he said.

The last thing he remembers before blacking out was pleading for help from a rescuer.

"I can remember grabbing his shoulders saying. 'please don't leave me here'. That's the last thing I remember seeing," he said.

Calls for better training

While many expected Decker to become emotional during his testimony, his lawyer guided him from question to question, and he remained composed. Still, he was introspective about his survival.

"I don't think that anyone will ever know why it was that I survived this disaster and the others did not," he told the inquiry. "It could just as easily have been someone else that survived and me that did not."

But Decker said a few factors may have helped him. He was young and relatively fit at the time of the crash. As an experienced sailor, he had been thrown into frigid waters from a capsized boat many times. That may have allowed him to remain calm as the helicopter's cabin filled quickly with freezing cold water.

He also said that further training could better prepare passengers to live through similar disasters.

"A couple days of controlled immersions in a pool every few years is not enough to allow anyone to develop the instinct of reaction that they need to have a chance of escaping a helicopter crash like Cougar 491," Decker said.

He spent close to three weeks recovering in hospital. He has refused to speak with the media about the ordeal, and only made a brief statement about the event prior to testifying.

Robert Wells, the head of an inquiry that is assessing the risks associated with offshore helicopter travel, personally asked Decker to take the stand.

He agreed, but on the condition that tight restrictions be put on the media. As a result, reporters were not allowed to approach Decker during the inquiry and were seated in a separate room from the inquiry itself.

"He is the only person who can really tell the tale of what happened on that Cougar helicopter flight out towards the offshore oil rigs on that day in March," CTV's Todd Battis reported from outside the inquiry. "They really want to be able to learn from this -- and this is the one person really who can tell them."

While the inquiry is looking into the issue of offshore helicopter safety, another probe by the Transportation Safety Board is looking into the actual cause of the crash.

With a report from CTV Atlantic Bureau Chief Todd Battis