The preliminary report of the investigation into last month’s deadly helicopter crash in New York City has been released, and in it, new images from a surveillance camera show what happened moments before it plummeted to Earth.
The National Transportation Safety Board released its first report into the incident on Wednesday, showing the chopper’s fuselage with the engine and rotors attached, breaking apart from the aircraft’s tail, The Associated Press reported.
Then, the rotor blades and the transmission broke from the cabin.
The cabin held five members of a family and the pilot. All six people on board were killed.
At the time of the flight, it was traveling about 110 miles an hour over the Hudson River, The New York Times reported. It was at an altitude of 625 to 650 feet before going as high as 675, then descending rapidly, falling more than 550 feet in seven seconds, hitting the river.
You can read the report here or below.
Several witnesses described hearing several loud ‘bangs’ emanating from the helicopter before it broke up and descended into the river,” the NTSB said in the report.
One thing not addressed in the report was why the helicopter broke mid-air.
The NTSB said the Bell 206L-4 was built in 2004. It had been operating for about 50 hours since its last inspection on Feb. 27. Over the aircraft’s life, the airframe had almost 13,000 hours of operation, while the engine had more than 23,000 hours.
The Federal Aviation Administration documented that the helicopter had an issue with its transmission assembly last September, the AP reported.
The NTSB had said that the helicopter did not have video or data recording devices, but photos of the pilot taken before the flight showed Seankese Johnson wearing computer-augmented sunglasses that would have video and audio recording capabilities; however, the glasses have not been recovered, CBS News reported.
Johnson was a former Navy SEAL who had a commercial pilot’s license since 2023. He had logged 790 hours of overall flight time, but only 50 hours on the Bell 206L-4.
He worked a 10-day on/10-day off schedule with April 10, the day of the crash, the first day back after being off for 10 days. The doomed flight was the eighth for both Johnson and the helicopter, the NTSB said.
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