Theory of what caused NYC helicopter crash emerges as aviation experts believe mechanical failure along with excessive maneuvering may have ultimately led to the New York Helicopter touring over Manhattan with a Spanish family of 5 to plummet into the Hudson River.
Theories as to what may have caused a NYC tour helicopter to crash into the Hudson River, Thursday afternoon, killing a family of five from Spain along with a 36 year old pilot have begun to emerge.
At the time, Agustin Escobar, a CEO of tech giant, Siemens in Spain along with his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children (ages, 4, 5 and 11 years old) were 16 minutes into what was suppose to be a dream tour over NYC’s Manhattan skyline only to turn into terror when at some point the craft, a N216MH – a Bell 206L-4, split in two after the main rotor ‘inexplicably’ cutting off the tail of the chopper.
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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
What caused chopper to run low on fuel?
Moments prior to the aircraft splitting, the unidentified pilot from New York Helicopter Tours had radioed base to warn that they were running out of fuel . The pilot had informed base quarters shortly after take off that the aircraft would be returning within 3 minutes. Except the chopper never made it back.
Captured footage showed the chopper ‘flying erratically’ just before it fell into the water, while other clips showed pieces of the aircraft flying off, including the chopper’s main rotor blades.
Captured video showing a rotor blade falling into the water led to aviation experts to believe that the crash occurred after the main rotor blades separated from the aircraft and slicing the tail.
‘From the footage, it appears that the main rotor struck the body of the helicopter, cutting off the tail of the helicopter, which created an unrecoverable event,’ former military aviator and attorney Jim Brauchle of Motley Rice LLC told the dailymail.
But what exactly had caused the main rotor blades to detach?
‘The two main causes of this phenomenon are mechanical failure or excessive maneuvering. Still, a full investigation is needed to understand why this tragedy occurred,’ Rice continued.
‘Having previously represented the families of tourists killed during a helicopter tour over the Hudson River, my heart goes out to the families at this catastrophic time.‘
Another expert told Fox 5 that in the case that the separating rotor blades sliced off the aircraft’s tail boom, the flight would have been unrecoverable.
‘If that articulating head actually separated from the aircraft, the aircraft was doomed. There’s no possibility of that aircraft ever having made a normal type of landing. It was going to crash,’ said aviation expert JP Tristani.
Did pilot error & ‘lack of experience’ cause NYC helicopter to crash?
NYC Helicopter catastrophic failure mid flight
‘In this particular case though, when you throw a blade, one blade or the entire head, no, you’re just a falling brick.’
FOX 5 NY‘s meteorologist and certified pilot, Nick Gregory, told the outlet that video footage made it ‘quite clear some sort of catastrophic failure happened exactly mid-flight.’ He explained that the rotor blades likely separated from the aircraft, which meant that ‘there’s no way to maintain any lift,’ rendering the pilot powerless.
Gregory further noted that once the blades detached, ‘it took out the tail, the tail rotor,’ leaving the pilot with no control over the aircraft. He explained that in cases of engine failure where everything else remains intact, pilots can perform a maneuver called ‘autorotation,’ where they use the momentum of spinning blades to safely land the helicopter. However, in this case, Gregory noted that when ‘there’s no power at all, no way to be able to control the situation.’
While early reports suggested weather might have played a role, Gregory confirmed that the crash was a result of mechanical failure, not environmental factors.
Michael Roth, 71, who owns New York Helicopter which provided the tour and the chopper, said the aircraft was running out of fuel before it crashed.
‘He [the pilot] called in that he was landing and that he needed fuel, and it should have taken him about three minutes to arrive, but 20 minutes later, he didn’t arrive,’ Roth told The Telegraph.
Roth said he was devastated by the crash and agreed with other experts that the video appears to show the main rotor blades had broken off.
‘The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,’ he told the New York Post.
‘And I haven’t seen anything like that in my 30 years being in business, in the helicopter business. 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.’
Of note, when asked how often and when was the last time the chopper was last inspected, Roth declined to answer, saying, ‘We follow all the rules and more.’
In a video of the moment of the crash that surfaced on social media, the helicopter can be seen maneuvering in the air in what appears to be a somersault. Along with many users who looked at the video and shared their opinion on X, a former combat helicopter pilot, called Jesse Matchey, made an appearance on News Nation and agreed that the video of the fall suggests it is a case of ‘mast bumping.’
Did mast bumping cause NYC helicopter crash?
‘I have no details, but it appears the main rotor detached and sliced the tail boom off (not sure how),’ Matchey said in an X post, initially. He had ruled out a bird or a wire strike. In a follow-up post, he said that the incident looked like a case of mast bumping.
‘It looks like it was a bell 206 (perhaps a long ranger)…mast bumping seems plausible/likely,’ he wrote. ‘In which case, the pilot error could be another potential contributing factor,’ he added, noting that is it still too early to point out the cause.
Both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are now involved in investigating the cause of the helicopter crashing – with the NTSB leading the investigation.
Thursday’s incident was the deadliest helicopter crash in New York City since at least 2018, according to the New York Times.
At least 32 people have died in helicopter crashes in NYC since 1977 — most recently in 2019 when a helicopter used for executive travel hit the roof of Manhattan skyscraper in restricted airspace and the pilot was killed.
