New York Helicopter the tour company that crashed with family of 5 had prior mechanical issue in recent months amid questions of culpability.
Does New York Helicopter CEO Michael Roth have blood on his hands?
The NYC helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River had a mechanical issue months before it broke apart midair and killed all six onboard, including a family of five visiting from Spain, according to records.
The ill-fated Bell206L-4 LongRanger IV aircraft, owned and operated by New York Helicopter, experienced a mechanical issue with its transmission assembly last September, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.
Did faulty Jesus Nut cause Hudson River Helicopter Crash?
Six people were killed Thursday when a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River near Lower Manhattan, authorities told ABC News. https://t.co/uZkWVvuDIt pic.twitter.com/Iz92x4aVjj
— ABC News (@ABC) April 10, 2025
Records show the doomed chopper was built in 2004 and had already logged 12,728 hours of flight time when it was forced into repair, the nypost reported.
An investigation is underway to determine what caused the aircraft to drop out of the sky and plunge into the river. The probe will comb through the pilot’s experience, the still-incomplete wreckage, along with the New York helicopter company that runs the sightseeing tours.
Investigators will also review the maintenance work that was done on the doomed aircraft, including the completion of two recent safety airworthiness directives the FAA issued on Bell 206L model helicopters.
The federal agency issued the first directive in December 2022 and called for the inspection and possible replacement of the models’ main rotor blades due to ‘delamination’ — an issue with the internal layers of the blade separating due to material fatigue, damage or other defects.
The problem, if not fixed, could potentially cause the rotor blade to fail.
A second directive, issued in May 2023, required the testing and possible replacement of tail rotor shafts on eight models, including the one involved in Thursday’s deadly wreck, according to the FAA, which issued the alert after a chopper lost a tail-rotor drive due to a joint failure.
The rotors on the doomed aircraft are still missing, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said Friday. NYPD divers were still searching the Hudson river for several mangled pieces of the craft.
Dramatic footage captured the aircraft splitting midair before the craft plummeting into the river, with at least one rotor still spinning as other parts of the helicopter fell in various directions.
The helicopter took off from Manhattan’s Downtown Skyport at roughly 1:50 p.m., with Siemens executive Agustin Escober, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, and their three young children — Augustin, 10, Mercedes, 8, and Victor, 4 — in tow.
The family, who hailed from Barcelona, Spain, were flown by Sean Johnson, 36, a Navy SEAL veteran who recently moved to NYC to pursue an aviation career.
The helicopter crashed about 25 minutes into its air tour, Homendy said.
According to the investigator, the crash wasn’t the the first time the tour company has seen one of its aircraft in the same murky waters.
A Bell 206 chopper carrying four Swedish tourists crashed landed in the Hudson when the aircraft lost power in June 2013 – with the pilot and four family members miraculously surviving.
New York Helicopter CEO Michael Roth told the Wall Street Journal at the time that the chopper underwent daily routine inspections but had ‘no clue why’ the aircraft malfunctioned mid-flight.
Now, 12 years later, Roth again has ‘no clue’ what happened.
‘I’m absolutely devastated,’ Roth told reporters after the deadly crash.
The CEO of the company operating the helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River expressed devastation, saying, “I don’t know anything how this went down… we are devastated. My wife hasn’t stopped crying since this afternoon. We’re a small company.” #New_York_City https://t.co/KCd8DE3uun pic.twitter.com/5aMLCSNnkR
— GeoTechWar (@geotechwar) April 11, 2025
Roth said the pilot had communicated to base that the chopper was out of fuel and needed to immediately return. Except the craft never returned. It remained unclear how the plane took off nearly empty on fuel or whether it began to emit fuels shortly into the sight seeing tour.
‘The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter. And I haven’t seen anything like that in my 30 years being in business, in the helicopter business,’ he continued.
“The only thing I could guess — I got no clue — is that it either had a bird strike or the main rotor blades failed. I have no clue. I don’t know. This is horrific. But you gotta remember something, these are machines and they break.’
Asked to discuss how often the helicopter was inspected or how recently, Roth declined, instead saying, ‘We follow all the rules and more.’
The helicopter was issued an airworthiness certificate in 2016 that was valid through 2029, records show.
