New York (AP) – Federal officials published on Wednesday images of a visibility helicopter sentenced to New York while he separated in the air last month, kill six people.
The series of fixed photographs taken from the video of the surveillance camera shows the fuselage, containing the engine and the rotors, separating from the tail of the helicopter. Rotor blades and the transmission then detach from the cabin which transports the passengers and the pilot.
The images were included in the preliminary report On the flight published by the National Transport Security Council.
“Several witnesses described on hearing several noisy” fringes “emanating from the helicopter before it separated and descended into the river,” said the report.
Justin Green, aviation lawyer and former marine helicopter pilot, said that the image sequence seriously shows the helicopter yawn and the defaulting tail boom, suggesting that it was most likely struck by the main blades of the main rotor of the plane during the flight.
“It is clear that a mechanical problem has precipitated the rupture,” he said.
The initial report, which executes around six pages, does not deal with the initial cause of the rupture. This said Green, will probably be determined by a medico-legal examination of the wreck itself, including rotor blades, engine and transmission.
“A tail strike could be caused by a pilot who does not handle a loss of energy and allowing the rotor regime to decompose, which makes the rotors go wild and which can cause a strike,” he said.
The plane, a 206l-4 Bell built in 2004, also seemed to be quite old and well used, according to Green.
At the time of the accident, the helicopter had operated around 50 hours since its last inspection on February 27, according to the NTSB report. The helicopter cell has accumulated almost 13,000 hours of operation in total and the engine has accumulated more than 23,000 hours.
Federal Aviation Administration files also show that the plane had a maintenance problem last September involving its transmission assembly.
“The NTSB will examine the redesign and maintenance files to ensure that everything is up to date,” said Green.
The NTSB previously said that the plane, operated by the New York Helicopter helicopter, was not equipped with video recording or data devices.
But on Wednesday, he said that the photos taken in advance show that the pilot, Seankese Johnson, wore computer sunglasses, which would have had a video and audio recording capacity. The glasses have not been recovered.
Johnson, a 36 -year -old former Navy Seal, obtained his sales pilot license in 2023 and had recorded 790 hours of flight, according to the NTSB report.
But he did not seem to be particularly experienced by stealing a 206L-4 bell, observed Al Yurman, a retired investigator of the NTSB. The agency said that in its report, Johnson had less than 50 hours of flight in this type of plane.
“It's quite sophisticated for this type of work,” said Yurman. “I would prefer to have someone more experienced, but we will know more when the full report comes out.”
The report indicates that Johnson worked “10 days on the leave calendar” and that the flight of April 10 was his first day of return after 10 days off. The flight was also the eighth that day for the pilot and the helicopter.
The plane was on a typical visit, leaving the Helport of the city center by Wall Street around 3 p.m. and flying north along the horizon of Manhattan before moving south towards the statue of Liberty.
Less than 18 minutes after the start of the flight, the witnesses saw the tail and the main rotor separate and the smoke pouring out of the rotating helicopter.
In recent years, the New York helicopter, the travel company, has gone bankrupt and faced undergoing lawsuits on alleged debts.
The company said that it was cooperating with the authorities in the investigation. No one answered the phone to his office or answered an email asking for comments on Wednesday.
The accident was part of a recent series of disasters of nearby planes and calls that left some people worried about flight security In the United States, it is also Breathe concerns On popular and costly air visits to New York.
Five tourism commercial helicopters have fallen into Manhattan rivers since 2005 following a mechanical failure, a pilot error or a collision, kill 20 people.
The accident of April 10 killed an eminent family de Barcelona, Spain: Agustín Escobar, 49 years old; Mercè Camprubí Montal, 39 years old; And their children Victor, 4 years old, Mercedes, 8, and Agustin, 10.
Officials said Escobar, a global CEO of railway infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, was in the New York region.
Montal, who worked for Siemens Energy and was the granddaughter of a former president of the famous Barcelona FC Soccer Club, flew away with their children to meet him.
