A New York City sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair Thursday and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River, killing six people, including a family of Spanish tourists, in the latest aviation disaster in the U.S., officials said.
Mayor Eric Adams said the flight began at a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. and that the dead — including three children — had been recovered and removed from the water. The flight lasted less than 18 minutes, 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.
Dani Horbiak was at her home in Jersey City, New Jersey, when she heard what sounded like “several gunshots in a row, almost, in the air.” She looked out her window and saw the chopper “splash in several pieces into the river.”
The helicopter was spinning uncontrollably with “a bunch of smoke coming out” before it slammed into the water, said Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Video of the crash showed parts of the chopper tumbling through the air into the water. The overturned aircraft was submerged, with rescue boats circling it, near the end of a long maintenance pier for a ventilation tower serving the Holland Tunnel on the New Jersey side of the river.
The flight was operated by New York Helicopters, officials said. No one answered the phones at the company’s offices in New York and New Jersey. Email and other messages were not immediately returned.
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.
Video of the crash suggested that a “catastrophic mechanical failure” left the pilot with no chance to save the helicopter, said Justin Green, an aviation lawyer who was a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps.
It’s possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall, Green said.
“They were dead as soon as whatever happened happened,” Green said. “There’s no indication they had any control over the craft. No pilot could have prevented that accident once they lost the lifts. It’s like a rock falling to the ground. It’s heartbreaking.”
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, the city has seen 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.
Thursday’s crash was the first fatal helicopter crash in New York since one hit the roof of a skyscraper in 2019, killing the pilot.
Recent crashes and close calls have left some people worried about the safety of flying in the U.S.
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 Associated Press contributed to this report.