Divers search Hudson River for parts of helicopter after crash
All six people aboard were killed in the New York crash – a family of five from Spain and the pilot, a 36-year-old US Navy veteran.
Divers used sonar on Friday to search for key pieces of a sightseeing helicopter which broke apart in midair and plunged into the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey.
All six people aboard were killed — a family of five from Spain and the pilot, a 36-year-old US Navy veteran.
The main and rear rotors, main transmission, roof structure and tail structure were still missing a day after Thursday’s crash, National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.
Witnesses said they saw the main rotor detach and spin away, and bystander video showed parts of the aircraft tumbling through the air.
Ms Homendy said investigators had only just begun looking at the wreckage, flight logs and other material and would not speculate on the cause. The agency, which has been spared from the Trump administration’s job-cutting measures, deployed 17 people to the crash scene, including 10 investigators.
“Everything is on the table. We don’t rule anything out,” she said. “We take a very detailed and comprehensive view, and it’s way too early in the investigation.”
The helicopter crashed around 3.15pm on Thursday, about 15 minutes after departing from a lower Manhattan heliport.
It flew up the west side of Manhattan, turned around near the George Washington Bridge and was heading south when it plummeted upside down into a shallow stretch of the river near Jersey City, New Jersey.
Just before takeoff, Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal and their three children — Victor, four, Mercedes, eight, and Agustin, 10 — smiled in front of the helicopter in souvenir photos posted to the tour operator’s website.
Mr Escobar, a 49-year-old executive with the German conglomerate Siemens, had extended a business trip to the US to sightsee in New York City and celebrate Mercedes’s ninth birthday, which would have been Friday, and his wife’s upcoming 40th birthday.
She was an executive at Siemens Energy, a company that had been a part of the conglomerate before being spun off as a separate entity.
In a statement posted on the social platform X on Friday night by Mr Montal’s brother, Joan Camprubi Montal, family members expressed gratitude for the “massive expressions of condolences and support,” adding: “There are no words to describe what we are experiencing, nor to thank the warmth received.”
Writing in Spanish and Catalan, he said family members had travelled to New York to handle arrangements and asked people to respect their privacy.
“These are very difficult times, but optimism and joy have always characterised our family. We want to keep the memory of a happy and united family, in the sweetest moment of their lives,” he said. “They have departed together, leaving an indelible mark among all their relatives, friends, and acquaintances.”
The pilot, Seankese Johnson, received his commercial pilot’s license in 2023, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and had logged about 800 hours of flight time as of March, Mr Homendy said.
Recently, he posted a photo on Facebook of himself piloting a helicopter with Manhattan in the background. In 2023, he posted that he was flying a firefighting helicopter.
“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,” he wrote.
He enlisted in the US Navy in 2006 and served until 2018, Defence Department records show.
The helicopter, a Bell 206 LongRanger IV, was built in 2004. According to FAA records, it 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.
