NYC helicopter crash: All 6 victims identified as crews search for wreckage – National
Police and fire department divers were searching Friday for the main and rear rotors of a sightseeing helicopter that broke apart in midair and crashed into the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, killing all six people aboard including a family of five from Spain.
Those parts, along with the helicopter’s transmission, the roof and tail structures have not been found since the crash Thursday afternoon, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters at a briefing in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Officials also identified the pilot as 36-year-old Seankese Johnson.
Hemendy said the NTSB would not speculate on the cause of the crash so early in the investigation.
“We are very factual and we will provide that in due course,” she said.
Visibility was low in the murky river and divers were using sonar to hunt for the missing pieces. The pilot and passenger cabin of the aircraft was pulled from the river Thursday night.
The victims from Spain included Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, 49, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, 39, who had been a global manager at an energy technology company, and their three children, Victor, 4, Mercedes, 8, and Agustin, 10. Mercedes would have turned 9 on Friday, officials said.
Escobar was in the New York area on business and his family flew over to meet him for a few days, said Steven Fulop, mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, in a post on X. He said officials were working with the medical examiner to release the bodies for their return to Spain.
FILE – Siemens executive Agustin Escobar speaks during a conference in Madrid, Spain, Sept. 5, 2024. (Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via AP).
Johnson regularly celebrated his career milestones as a helicopter pilot on social media. In March, he changed his Facebook profile to a screengrab of him piloting a helicopter with a view of Freedom Tower and the Manhattan skyline in the background.
In the summer of 2023, he announced that he was flying a Blackhawk helicopter to fight fires for a Montana-based firm.
“Long hours and painstaking work to get to this moment. Thank you for all the love and support from those who’ve helped me get here,” Johnson wrote.
In another aviation accident on Friday, three people were killed and one was injured when a small plane crashed in Boca Raton, Florida.
Officials call for air traffic restrictions
Community activists and officials have repeatedly proposed banning or restricting traffic at Manhattan heliports, citing New York City’s history of fatal helicopter accidents that have killed 38 people since 1977 as well as the relentless noise.
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In an interview with The Associated Press, state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat who represents a district on the west side of Manhattan along the Hudson River, said the crash was a “reminder of our worst fears of tourist helicopters” and called for restrictions on flights over the city.
“Having non-essential flights over densely populated areas is a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Robert Carroll, a Democratic member of the state Assembly, called for a stop to all sightseeing and commuter-related helicopter flights until the cause of Thursday’s crash is determined.
Adams, however, said he doesn’t want to restrict such flights until the investigation is complete.
“We have thousands of flights using helicopters and tourism,” he said on 1010 WINS news radio. “People want to see the city from the sky. At the heart of this is safety. It must be done right. We must look at the maintenance record of this helicopter. We must look at the record of the pilot. And we need to find out what happened.”
A helicopter industry group also urged caution.
“The helicopter community is in shock and mourning after the tragic and horrific events of yesterday,” Jeff Smith, chairman of the Eastern Region Helicopter Council, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, some well-meaning but misguided leaders are using this tragedy to exploit and push their decades-old agenda to ban all helicopters.”
A collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed nine people, and five died in 2018 when a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River.
Witnesses describe the helicopter’s plunge into the Hudson
The doomed flight departed a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. Thursday and lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data shows it flew north along the Manhattan skyline then south toward the Statue of Liberty.
Video of the crash show parts of the aircraft tumbling through the air near the Jersey City shoreline. The helicopter hit the river near a long maintenance pier for a ventilation shaft serving the Holland Tunnel.
A crane vessel lifts the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig).
Witnesses described hearing loud bangs and looking up to see the helicopter’s main rotor detach from the aircraft and spin away, while the cabin and the chopper’s severed tail boom plummeted into the river.
Rescue boats circled the submerged aircraft within minutes of impact. The pilot and passengers were removed from the water but could not be saved, officials said.
Tour company’s owner unsure what went wrong
The flight was operated by New York Helicopter, one of a handful of companies that offer tourists sightseeing flights over the city from helipads in Manhattan and the suburbs. No one answered the phones at the company’s offices in New York and New Jersey on Thursday or Friday.
A person who answered the phone at the home of the company’s owner, Michael Roth, said he declined to comment. Roth told the New York Post he was devastated and had “no clue” what happened.
“The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,” the Post quoted him as saying. He added that he had not seen anything like this during his 30 years in the helicopter business, but noted: “These are machines, and they break.”
A New York Police Department scuba team prepares to dive, Friday, April 11, 2025, where a sightseeing helicopter crashed a day earlier into the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura).
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. It was initially developed for the U.S. Army and thousands have been manufactured over the years.
FAA data shows the helicopter was built in 2004. It was a Bell 206 LongRanger IV, a slightly longer version of the original Bell 206 that can seat five passengers and two crew members.
According to FAA records, the helicopter had a maintenance issue last September involving its transmission assembly. An entry in the agency’s Service Difficulty Reporting System shows the transmission assembly had metal in oil, a sign of wear, and a bearing in the transmission was found to be flaking. The helicopter had logged 12,728 total flight hours at the time, according to the records.
Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo in New York; Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain contributed.
