Helicopter crashes in NY's East River; tourist dies, 4 saved

Pilot, three passengers rescued; two reportedly in critical condition

NEW YORK — Four people were rescued but crews could not save a fifth person when a helicopter crashed Tuesday afternoon in New York City's East River.

The pilot and three passengers were pulled from the water by rescuers shortly after the helicopter went down around 3:30 p.m. ET, the N.Y. Police Department said.

Two of the passengers were taken to a hospital in critical condition, NBC affiliate WNBC reported, adding that all four passengers were tourists from England. A third person was in serious condition.

Rescuers recovered the body of the fourth tourist, a woman, about an hour later.

Two of the passengers were believed to be British living in Portugal, and the other two lived in Australia, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The private chopper went into the river off 34th Street in midtown Manhattan, a few blocks south of the United Nations headquarters. It's unclear what happened, but witnesses reported it was sputtering and appeared to be in some type of mechanical distress.

Joy Garnett and her husband were on the dock waiting to take the East River ferry to Brooklyn when they heard the blades of a helicopter and saw it start to take off from the nearby helipad. She said she saw it do "a funny curlicue."

"I thought, 'Is that some daredevil move?'" she said. "But it was obviously out of control. The body spun around at least two or three times, and then it went down."

She said the chopper had lifted about 25 feet off the ground before it dropped into the water without much of a splash. It flipped over, and the blades were sticking up out of the river. She said people on the dock started throwing in life jackets and buoys. Two people came up out of the waves.

"It didn't make much noise," she said. "It was just a splash and sunk."

Dan Sweeney, a manager at the NYC Water Club, told NBC affiliate WNBC that he saw the crash.

"It went down pretty fast, you could see the splash, you could see the top of it and it just disappeared," he said. "It looked like it was trying to land at the heliport and missed the landing."

"It sank fast," added Carlos Acevedo, of Puerto Rico, who was with his wife at a nearby park when they saw the helicopter go down. "In seconds. Like the water was sucking it in."

A massive rescue effort was under way within minutes of the crash, with a dozen boats and divers down into the cold, grey water searching for the fifth passenger.

Emergency crews arrived to find the chopper inverted in the murky water with just its skids showing on the surface. The pilot, Paul Dudley, and three passengers were bobbing in the chilly water, and it looked as though a man was diving down and coming back up, possibly in an attempt to rescue the remaining passenger, witnesses said.

Officers jumped in and pulled out two women and a man, police spokesman Paul Browne said. The women were in critical condition, and the man was stable. All were hospitalized. The pilot swam to the riverbank, remained at the scene and was uninjured.

The weather was clear but a little windy Tuesday. There were a few clouds at 3,500 feet above sea level, well above the typical flying altitude for helicopters.

Crews using a crane lifted the helicopter's wreckage from the water Tuesday evening and gently lowered it onto a recovery boat. The chopper appeared outwardly intact as it was raised from the water and swung toward the vessel.

Dudley is a commercial pilot and owns Linden Airport Services, the company that manages the Linden municipal airport under a 20-year contract with the city, Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka said.

"He flies light aircraft, he flies helicopters," Gerbounka said. "He's an accomplished pilot."

In November 2006, Dudley landed a Cessna 172 light plane in a park near Coney Island in Brooklyn after the engine failed. No one was hurt during the emergency landing, and the plane was taken back to Linden after mechanics removed the wings.

The Bell 206 Jet Ranger is one of the world's most popular helicopter models and was first flown in January 1966. They are light and highly maneuverable, making them popular with television stations and air taxi companies. A new one costs between $700,000 and $1.2 million.

On Aug. 8, 2009, a small plane collided with a helicopter over the Hudson River, killing nine people, including five Italian tourists. A government safety panel found that an air traffic controller who was on a personal phone call had contributed to the accident.

The Federal Aviation Administration changed its rules for aircraft flying over New York City's rivers after that collision. Pilots must call out their positions on the radio and obey a 161 mph speed limit. Before the changes, such radio calls were optional.

Earlier that year, an Airbus 320 airliner landed in the Hudson River after hitting birds and losing both engines shortly after taking off from LaGuardia Airport. The flight, U.S. Airways Flight 1549, became known as the Miracle on the Hudson plane.

Original article posted here