Helicopter crashes into Hudson River, killing six

New York: A sightseeing helicopter tumbled out of the sky and plunged into the Hudson River across from Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, killing all six people aboard, including three children, officials said.

Video footage showed the helicopter falling end over end and crashing into the water just off Jersey City, New Jersey, at high speed at about 3:15 p.m. Witnesses reported hearing a loud bang and seeing the helicopter hit the river without at least one of its rotor blades.

Two adults and three children from Spain — Agustín Escobar, an executive with the technology company Siemens, and his family — were pulled from the helicopter or the frigid river but none survived, a senior law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the crash. The pilot was also killed.

Two of the passengers were alive when divers pulled them from the water but later died, New York City’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said at a news conference.

“Six innocent souls have lost their lives, and we pray for them and their families,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said.

It was the deadliest helicopter crash in New York City in at least seven years.

The helicopter, a Bell 206, was operated by New York Helicopter, which runs sightseeing tours for several hundred dollars a flight. The company’s CEO, Michael Roth, said he did not know what had happened to the aircraft, which he had leased from a company in Louisiana. The National Transportation Safety Board was leading the investigation into the crash.

Tisch said that flight-tracking software indicated that the helicopter had taken off from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, near the lower tip of Manhattan, at 2:59 p.m. It circled near the Statue of Liberty, flew north just off the New York shoreline to the George Washington Bridge and was heading back south just off the New Jersey shoreline when it crashed.

Witnesses described a terrifying sight as the helicopter fell from the gray sky like a stone.

Mandy Bowlin, who was visiting from Chattanooga, Tennessee, said she was on a Circle Line tour boat when she heard a boom behind her and saw the helicopter plummeting. A rotor blade flew off, and the craft nose-dived into the water, she said. Bowen said she had seen other debris flying toward the boat and had worried for her daughter’s safety.

“We’re kind of shook up,” Bowen said. “It was scary.”

Peter Park, who lives in Jersey City, said he heard “a loud bang” at about 3:15 p.m. and looked out his window to see an aircraft emitting black smoke.

Then he saw the unattached blades falling into the river so close to the New Jersey side that he feared they might strike people on the shore.

Park said he had texted his wife to say that he thought he had just seen a helicopter fall into the river. Then he dialed 911, he said.

Police boats and other rescue vessels along with divers quickly responded to the crash, surrounding the overturned helicopter.

Every year, tens of thousands of tourist helicopter flights depart from heliports in and around New York City. The tours advertise the chance to see many of the city’s famed sights from above — Central Park, One World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty — in as little as 15 minutes.

The crash was the third fatal one for New York City’s helicopter tour industry in the past two decades. In 2009, a sightseeing helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine people.

In 2018, an open-door tourist helicopter crashed into the East River, killing five passengers. Only the pilot escaped.

That crash was caused by a loose, improvised safety harness that caught on the helicopter’s fuel shut-off lever, mounted on the floor. That activated the lever, killed the engine and caused the crash, the NTSB found.

The passengers’ safety harnesses, meant to prevent them from falling out the open door of the helicopter, instead locked them in place as the cabin filled with water, the board found. Last year, a jury awarded $116 million in compensatory and punitive damages to family members of one of the passengers, Trevor Cadigan, 26.

At least 32 people have died in helicopter crashes in New York City since 1977, according to The Associated Press.