New York City joined Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia on the list of northeastern cities with a deadly air disaster this year. A Bell 206L4 sightseeing helicopter broke apart in the air over the Hudson River then plummeted into the water on Thursday afternoon. The resulting crash killed the pilot, a Siemens executive, his wife and their three young children. The family from Spain was visiting the Big Apple on vacation. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time that the helicopter’s operator had one of its aircraft crash into the Hudson.
Federal authorities are still in the early stages of investigating what went wrong, but the NYPD has piece together a rough series of events before the crash took place. The helicopter took off from the Wall Street heliport at 3:00 p.m., CBS News reports. The often-used route had the rotorcraft flying up and down a 12-mile stretch of sky between the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said:
“The helicopter reached the George Washington Bridge and then turned again to fly south along the New Jersey shoreline. Shortly thereafter, the aircraft lost control and hit the water just a few feet off the coast of Pier A Park in Hoboken.”
The tail boom strike could be why the helicopter broke apart in mid-air
The description of the crash by eyewitnesses seems eerily similar to a tail boom strike, a phenomenon where the main rotor blades hit the structure that supports the tail rotor and the tail fin. A helicopter’s blades aren’t rigid pieces as they flex against the air. The blades’ flexible nature also means that they don’t immediately shift with the helicopter’s orientation. If the pilot pushes the nose down too quickly, the tail boom could be raised directly into the path of the blades. Video of the crash posted on social media appears to show the tail boom strike’s aftermath, with the helicopter’s body hitting the waters with the boom sheared off and the main rotor blades tumbling down separately.
Rescue personnel reached the helicopter within minutes but everyone onboard was dead. The pilot’s name has yet to be released, but the family was identified by German conglomerate Siemens. The passengers were Agustin Escobar, the CEO of the company’s rail infrastructure division, his wife Merce Comprubi Montal and their three children who were 4, 5 and 11 years old. Michael Roth, the CEO and owner of the helicopter operator, said to CNN:
“The only thing I can tell you, we are devastated, my wife hasn’t stopped crying since this afternoon. We’re a small company. I’m a father and a grandfather, and we’re just devastated.”
Duffy wants everyone to know that air traffic control wasn’t involved
Of course, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had to chime in to wash his hands of any responsibility. The former contestant on “The Real World” posted on X to say that the helicopter was operating in New York’s Special Flight Rules Area and wasn’t under the direction of air traffic control during the crash as a result. I’m not saying that Duffy is being defensive about the current state of the FAA, but I think there were more pertinent details about the crash than ATC coverage. While the fatal mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport between a U.S. Army helicopter and a regional jet was partly blamed on stretched air traffic control resources, there’s no indication that ATC played a role in the Hudson River crash.