Summary
A tourist helicopter carrying a Spanish family of five and a pilot crashed into the Hudson River near Lower Manhattan, killing all 6 aboard, including 3 children.
The Bell 206 helicopter plunged into the water inverted, missing its rotor blades, just over 15 minutes after departing the Wall St. Heliport.
Witnesses described loud noises and parts falling off before impact.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating, and Jersey City officials renewed calls for tighter air traffic safety.
Tragic. A family on vacation with three kids.
I took one of those tours when I spent a week in NYC. Definitely wouldn’t do the same now.
2 helicopter crashes today. I hope we hear the cause of this one
The video on this one was so weird, like the transmission suddenly and violently locked up, snapping all the prop blades in half.
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A Telegram news channel: https://t.me/bnonews/3864
It’s a distant shot and the moment of impact is obscured from view, but you can clearly see chunks of propeller blades spinning through the air while the remnants still attached to the helicopter don’t appear to rotate at all.
Edit: Oh wait, it lands upside down so those are the skids. Duh.
Holy shit, they came down fuckin hard 😮
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Tighten your Jesus nut
Don’t forget the tie wire…
Yea, somebody missed a step, and someone else did too.
I have family/friends in different parts of the aeronautical world - the procedures, documentation, sign-offs, and oversight is staggering, regardless of which area: A&P maintenance, refurb, , commercial/private/military, research/experimental, etc.
But luckily all those pesky regulashuns are getting cut now.
Back in 2018 there was a crash in Canada involving a failed TT strap, so Transport Canada issued an AD about that particular manufacturer’s TT straps. The FAA put out a similar AD in September 2024. A failed TT strap will cause a rotor separation. I imagine that’ll be one of the first things they look at.
The dwarf epileptic amputee air traffic controller can’t be blamed this time: they’ve all been fired.
There’s video of blades falling down separately from the helicopter falling without blades on
That’s not good. It’s my understanding that the blades are typically meant to stay attached.
there was a comedy bit that I can’t seem to find now but a punchline of it was “I’m not a pilot, but when I see a helicopter in a tree I know somebody fucked up”
Steve Hofstetter is the comedian
Just a hunch
Okay, got my guilty laugh of the day out of the way. Thanks.
It’s almost like helicopters are dangerous and you shouldn’t be in one unless you really need to.
They’re only dangerous if they’re poorly maintained… like any aircraft.
Or in windy weather, or with other helicopters around, or with bad thermals…
Helicopters are 35% more dangerous than planes, but that stat includes small aircraft, which are 10x more dangerous than jets. So they are WAY more dangerous than jets. By hour they are 85x more dangerous than cars, but comparing traveling similar distances they are 4x safer than cars.
Saying they’re only dangerous compared to any aircraft if poorly maintained is just incorrect.
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Autorotation.
True, but they aren’t dangerous enough for it to be an issue during daily use.
Like any tool, they’re not dangerous unless improperly maintained or piloted. I can virtually guarantee you, this will come down to either a guilty mechanic (or policies governing mechanic activities) or a guilty pilot. This is not a consequence of “helicopters are fundamentally unsafe vehicles, unfit for tourist consumption.” Laughable.
Like almost every other mode of transportation, flying in a helicopter is considerably more dangerous than airline travel. But it’s far safer than riding in a car.
Helicopter travel is, using our metric, slightly more dangerous than mass transit, but we can broadly say they’re in the same safety band.
Wait, was this because of that penguin?
No, that was in South Africa.
Almost like safety regulations are written in blood. Clearly we need less of them, they just get in thenof innovation .
