A sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair Thursday and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront, killing six people, including a family of Spanish tourists, in the latest high-profile aviation disaster in the U.S., New York City officials said.
Mayor Eric Adams said the flight began at a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. and that the dead had been recovered and removed from the water.
The pilot, another two adults and three children were on board, an official told reporters.
New York City Police divers and fire department divers helped remove the victims from the water. Four were pronounced dead at the scene, while two others were taken to area hospitals where they succumbed to their injuries. The helicopter hit the water inverted, officials said.
Witness Bruce Wall said he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.
Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, said she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.
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“There was a bunch of smoke coming out. It was spinning pretty fast, and it landed in the water really hard,” she said in a phone interview.
Video posted to social media showed parts of the chopper splashing into the water, and the overturned aircraft was submerged, with rescue boats circling it.
The skies were overcast at the time, but visibility over the river was not substantially impaired. Rescue crews had to deal with 45-degree water temperatures.
The Federal Aviation Administration identified the helicopter as a Bell 206, a model widely used in commercial and government aviation, including by sightseeing companies, TV news stations and police departments. It was initially developed for the U.S. Army before being adapted for other uses. Thousands have been manufactured over the years.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would investigate.
The rescue craft were near the end of a long maintenance pier for a ventilation tower serving the Holland Tunnel on the New Jersey side of the river. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were on nearby streets with their lights flashing.
The skies over Manhattan are routinely filled with planes and helicopters, both private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights. Manhattan has several helipads that whisk business executives and others to destinations throughout the metropolitan area.
Over the years, there have been multiple crashes, including a collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson River in 2009 that killed nine people and the 2018 crash of a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights that went down into the East River, killing five people.
A medical transport plane killed seven people when it plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January. That happened two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in midair in Washington — the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation.
The crashes and other close calls have left some people worried about the safety of flying.
—With additional files from Global News
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