The tourist helicopter pilot who crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon could not have done anything to save himself or his five passengers after the plane’s rotor blades and his tail pen separated in the air, an aviation expert said on Friday.
“Everything we train as helicopter pilots is assumed that the rotor system is still linked to the aircraft,” said Brandt Anderson, a former pilot of combat helicopters of the US Army. UU. Uu. He is now a policy advisor. “Once that is separated, there are no wings, there is no ability to slide, it is just falling from the sky at that point.”
“It’s absolutely horrible,” he added.
An official of the National Transport Security Board (NTSB) said at a press conference on Friday that he would not speculate on a preliminary cause when asked if the agency had identified one, emphasizing instead that researchers were still looking for components and structures of the aircraft, interviewing witnesses and obtaining records, including the helicopter operator, New York Helicopters and its owner. And its owner.
“We don’t rule out anything,” said Jennifer Homendy, the president of the NTSB. “We have a very detailed and comprehensive vision and it is too early in the investigation.”
The Bell 206 Tourism Helicopter started from a helipad in the center of Manhattan at 2:59 pm and the trip lasted less than 20 minutes. The video of eyewitnesses showed the rotors and fuselage that separated in the air before the helicopter collapsed from the sky, crashing the Hudson River near Jersey City, New Jersey.
The accident killed AgustÃn Escobar, the executive director of the railway infrastructure for the German Technology Company Siemens, his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal and his three children, as well as the pilot, Sean Johnson.
The divers were still looking for the main rotor of the helicopter, the main transmission and its roof and tail structures on Friday, said Homandy.
Robert Joslin, professor at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University in Daytona, Florida, said that when researchers examine the remains, they will analyze whether there were any structural or impact failures that made the tail rotor detach.
“Once the tail rotor emerges, I mean, this is not speculation, it’s like a rocker,” he said. “Once that tail boom separated from the rest of the helicopter, you could see fall.”
Joslin previously served as the main scientific and technical advisor of the Federal Aviation Administration for flight technology and was a flight test pilot with the agency. He was also a colonel in the United States Marines and a military test pilot.
He said that researchers will also investigate the aircraft maintenance records to see if there was any problem in their history.
Anderson, the former combat helicopter pilot of the US Army., And John Cox, pilot and president and CEO of Safety Operating Systems LLC, said that a fatal accident like this is very rare.
“There are cases in which Campana 206, in particular, can be stress flying aggressively,” Anderson said. “But according to what we know now, I don’t think that is the case here, and that makes it even more worrying. It makes structural failure even more alarming.”
At the press conference on Friday, Homendy urged anyone with photos or videos that believe they could help researchers send them to the NTSB.
Homendy said that the videos that circulate on social networks have been “very useful” for researchers, but that many of them had been filmed from a distance and would require greater review at the agency’s headquarters.
“We hope to obtain some additional videos that provide us with information,” he said. “We do not know what people have recorded or taken photos that could be useful in an investigation.”
She said the NTSB has found that it is the case in past investigations, such as the collision in the air of Ketchikan, Alaska, in the air in 2019, where the photos of a passenger aboard one of the planes helped the agency significantly in her investigation.
While it is not clear how the helicopter broke, Joslin said that the main way in which an engine blade would separate is through a “protuberance of the mast”, which occurs when the excessive flutter of the rotor blades causes the cube to contact the rotor mast.
“It is one of the dangers that stand out in wobble rotor helicopters,” said Joslin.
