What aviation consultants say concerning the doomed helicopter within the deadly New York crash

The pilot of the vacationer helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon couldn’t have executed something to avoid wasting himself or his 5 passengers after the plane’s rotor blades and its tail increase indifferent within the air, an aviation skilled mentioned Friday.

“All the pieces we practice for as helicopter pilots is underneath the belief that the rotor system remains to be hooked up to the plane,” mentioned Brandt Anderson, a former U.S. Military fight helicopter pilot who’s now a coverage adviser. “As soon as that’s separated, there’s no wings, there’s no skill to glide — it’s simply falling out of the sky at that time.”

“It’s completely horrible,” he added. 

An official from the Nationwide Transportation Security Board (NTSB) mentioned at a information convention Friday that she wouldn’t speculate as to a preliminary trigger when requested whether or not the company had recognized one, emphasizing as a substitute that investigators had been nonetheless looking for elements of and constructions from the plane, interviewing witnesses and acquiring information, together with of the operator of the helicopter, New York Helicopters, and its proprietor.

“We don’t rule something out,” mentioned Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB. “We take a really detailed and complete view and it’s method too early within the investigation.”

The Bell 206 sightseeing helicopter departed a downtown Manhattan heliport at 2:59 p.m. and the experience lasted lower than 20 minutes. Eyewitness video confirmed the rotors and the fuselage separating in midair earlier than the helicopter plummeted from the sky, crashing upside-down into the Hudson River close to Jersey Metropolis, New Jersey. 

The crash killed Agustín Escobar, the chief government for rail infrastructure for the German know-how firm Siemens, his spouse, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three kids, in addition to the pilot, Sean Johnson. 

Divers had been nonetheless looking for the helicopter’s major rotor, major transmission and its roof and tail constructions on Friday, Homendy mentioned. 

Robert Joslin, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College in Daytona, Florida, mentioned that when investigators look at the wreckage, they are going to have a look at whether or not there have been any structural or influence failures that made the tail rotor come off. 

“As soon as the tail rotor comes off, I imply, this isn’t hypothesis, it’s similar to a seesaw,” he mentioned. “As soon as that tail increase was separated from the remainder of the helicopter, then you would see it tumbling.”

Joslin beforehand served because the Federal Aviation Administration’s chief scientific and technical advisor for flight deck know-how and was a flight check pilot with the company. He was additionally a colonel within the U.S. Marine Corps and a army check pilot.

He mentioned investigators may even probe the plane’s upkeep information to see whether or not there have been any points in its historical past.

Anderson, the previous U.S. Military fight helicopter pilot, and John Cox, a pilot and the president and CEO of Security Working Programs LLC, mentioned a deadly crash like this one could be very uncommon.

“There are cases the place the Bell 206, specifically, can be put into stress by flying it aggressively,” Anderson mentioned. “However primarily based on what we all know now, I don’t suppose that’s the case right here — and that makes it much more regarding. It makes the structural failure much more alarming.”

On the information convention Friday, Homendy urged anybody with photographs or movies that they consider might help investigators to ship them to the NTSB.

Homendy mentioned the movies circulating on social media have been “very useful” to investigators, however that a lot of them had been filmed from a far distance and would require additional evaluate on the company’s headquarters.

“We’re hoping to get some further movies that present us data,” she mentioned. “We don’t know what individuals have recorded or taken footage of that might be useful in an investigation.”

She mentioned the NTSB has discovered that to be the case in previous investigations, such because the Ketchikan, Alaska, midair collision in 2019, the place photographs from a passenger aboard one of many airplanes helped the company considerably in its investigation.

Whereas it stays unclear how the helicopter broke aside, Joslin mentioned that the first method {that a} motor blade would detach is thru a “mast bump,” which happens when extreme flapping of the rotor blades causes the hub to contact the rotor mast.

“It is without doubt one of the hazards that’s highlighted in teetering rotor helicopters,” Joslin mentioned.