The videos then showed to the court depicted the helicopters colliding, before James was able to gain control of his helicopter, and landing on a sandbar.
James died last year from cancer.
An excerpt of video from one of the helicopters shows the other helicopter above the helipad 10 seconds before passengers braced for impact.
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.
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.
The ATSB found Jenkinson had low levels of cocaine in his system, but the bureau said the drugs were unlikely to have affected his flying skills.
“Even if it must be concluded, as the ATSB has opined, the pilot was ‘unlikely to have been affected by the drug at the time of the accident’, was his resulted activity a way of trying to deal with the workload, stress and pressures occasioned by all of the issues he was trying to work his way through in December 2022 in relation to the onboarding of the two new aircraft?” Harvey said.
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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