A guided tour helicopter with (5) passengers and (1) pilot has crashed in the Hudson River in NYC.  All aboard are confirmed lost.  Tragically, it was a family of five who had arrived in the US from Spain earlier in the day and the two parents and three small children decided to go on a helicopter tour of the city.  There are pictures of the happy and excited family as they boarded the helicopter.  Even worse, there is video of the crash...and it is graphic.

Aircraft looks to be a Bell 206 Jet Ranger but this has yet to be confirmed (just my opinion).  Helo appeared to have a catastrophic breakup in flight; video of the helo coming down shows it missing its main rotor entirely and also the rear boom has sheared off.  A failure like this while in flight would result in complete loss of aerodynamic control (i.e. no 'auto-rotation' possible), and the helo fell out of the sky like a stone into the river.  High velocity impact too.

I've watched several of the videos (one of them is linked below...you'll probably want to look at it before it's taken down, if you're interested.)  As an aviator myself (not a helo qualified though) what I find strange is there is virtually no sound before the aircraft hits the water.  There is no rotor sound, no turbine whine...just silence...and then splash.  This leads me to believe that whatever happened must have happened pretty high up and it must have been about as major as you can get in terms of failures (i.e. uncontained turbine failure, carbon fiber rotor de-lamination or separation, Jesus nut failure, and possibly even a main rotor strike on the boom section to shear it off).  It just doesn't get any worse than that!

Tragic day for a young family who were just out for a fun sightseeing trip.  May they all RIP.

Here's a link to one of the videos

https://nypost.com/2025/04/10/us-news/di...son-river/

   

edit - It has now been confirmed, the helicopter was indeed a Bell 206L-4 IV LongRanger as I sort of suspected.  Only major difference is this helo was the "L" version which has been lengthened to carry additional PAX.  It also goes by the "LongRanger" moniker, not the "JetRanger" name which is the shorter version.  In any case, a very nice single turbine light helicopter with some serious chops and street cred.

BTW - In case it is not clear in the picture, the helicopter is nearly inverted in the picture (i.e. upside down). The long bar looking things you see above the body are actually the landing skids on the bottom of the helicopter.

Just thought I'd clear up any misunderstanding about the picture.

Pretty catastrophic failure, for sure. I've never seen anything like that that wasn't from a collision or war videos with missiles or whatever. I did see cockpit video from a failure of some kind where they managed a hard landing, but it's incredible people were able to get their phones or whatever out to catch some of this. Seems to have happened very fast. I would imagine that the loss of a tail or the main rotor, either one alone, would mean that a crash in happening within a very short window. The witness said it seemed to just start to fall apart and then dropped.

It will be interesting to see what they determine the chain of events were that caused all of this. I don't know what kind of information the black box will give them or if it's enough for a good timeline of events. It all had to have happened so close together, moments it would seem. If the main rotor just detaches and just starts flying off, maybe if they were applying hard lift force (forgive me the lack of knowledge about the terms), would the rapid shift into freefall be enough force to snap the tail off? The main rotor looked sort of intact, so I would think it didn't hit anything. I don't know the physics involved. I just imagine things moving at that speed being turned to shrapnel when they strike things. I don't know what the blades are even made from. It's difficult for me to imagine it all. I'd be curious to know if the tail was mostly intact.

I've never been in one and have no intention of ever being in one if I can help it. I try to minimize my exposure to things that have many single points of catastrophic failure that I can't walk away from. I can't imagine a scenario that wasn't for acute medical care that would be important enough for me to get anywhere near a chopper. I admit that I'm a boring guy these days, but I wasn't always and even back then I considered helicopters sketchy. Cool, but sketchy.

If I was a betting man, right now I'd bet that the main rotor was what sheared off the tail boom.  In catastrophic helicopter incidents this is not unheard of.  If the plane of rotation of the main rotor changes dramatically, or if the tail boom suddenly pitches upwards into the path of the rotor, the carbon fiber rotor blade will slice through the tail boom like butter, shearing it off.  This type of an event is not possible during controlled flight as the flight controls will not permit enough control input to allow this to happen.  However, if there was a major failure either with the rotor itself, or the main rotor shaft, or the linkages connecting the assemblies together, then it could become a possibility.  Failures like this are extremely rare though.  But this particular incident is so energetic that I doubt something like a bird strike could have caused this.  My intuition tells me this event is almost certainly the result of some type of a major mechanical malfunction.

Most major events are things like turbine or engine failures, or having the main rotors strike another object like a power line, tree, building or structure.  As long as the main rotor stays intact and rotating, a helicopter can actually fly like an airplane in the event of a failure.  This is known as "autorotation" where the spinning rotor continues to provide lift as long as the helicopter has forward momentum.  The rotor stops acting like a rotor in this case and functions more like a wing on an airplane.  Again though, the helicopter must be moving in a forward direction for auto-rotation to work.  Even then, it can still be a hard landing, but at least it's one passengers and crew can walk away from.

Without the main rotor attached to the helo, it would fall like a stone right out of the sky.  And this appears to be exactly what happened.  There is zero chance of controlling the helicopter's attitude, orientation or angle of attack when this occurs.  It is a complete and catastrophic loss of control.  It would be a pretty violent event inside the helicopter when something like this were to happen.  It would happen so quickly and likely be so violent that occupants would not likely have enough time to mentally digest what was happening and get their bearings before impact.  (Let's hope that was the case here anyway).

If I were to speculate at this point as to the cause, I would think the event was caused by a severe main rotor de-lamination and failure of one of the two blades.  If a large section of one of the rotor blades separated from the rest of the blade assembly there would be a sudden dramatic imbalance in the rotor rotation.  This could cause the remaining portion of the rotor to spin wildly off it's axis and could potentially impact the tail boom, shearing it off.  At a high rotational speed, this impact and instantaneous deceleration would be enough to shear off the main rotor mast.  From there the remaining elements of the helicopter fuselage simply fell out of the sky.  I don't believe there was any pilot error in this incident.  If this is what actually happened, then at that exact moment the pilot became just another doomed passenger as he was powerless to correct anything.  I also think they'll find that this wasn't a glaring maintenance oversight either.  Defects, fatigue and damage to carbon fiber is very difficult to spot in some cases without things like x-ray testing which is not something which is done on a routine or daily inspection basis.  Visual checks are made during pre-flight inspections, but unless there was visual damage to the rotor which was overlooked, then other internal damage would be very difficult to spot.

I saw the photo of the helicopter before the crash and the tail is much smaller than I imagined before.

I believe the cockpit video I saw of the hard landing mentioned autorotation in the comments, but the term escaped me. I also don't know if they were correct, but I'm glad you explained that term again for me. Second time coming across it makes it stick in my mind better.

Is autorotation something that is mostly just trained for and talked about? Is it something people often walk away from? That seems like something you'd have to change your underwear after performing... at a minimum.

(04-11-2025, 02:10 AM)Ksihkehe Wrote: I saw the photo of the helicopter before the crash and the tail is much smaller than I imagined before.

I believe the cockpit video I saw of the hard landing mentioned autorotation in the comments, but the term escaped me. I also don't know if they were correct, but I'm glad you explained that term again for me. Second time coming across it makes it stick in my mind better.

Is autorotation something that is mostly just trained for and talked about? Is it something people often walk away from? That seems like something you'd have to change your underwear after performing... at a minimum.

Believe it or not, auto-rotation is something you actually do as part of helicopter flight training.  There's two phases of it.  The first is auto-rotation almost all the way to the ground, enough to adequately demonstrate the principles.  The primary skill being taught with this first phase is to surprise the student by suddenly chopping the power to idle and ensuring the student can set the helicopter up properly to auto-rotate (i.e. that he can configure the controls and aircraft to transition from vertical lift to horizontal lift).  This is similar in some ways to stall training in fixed wing aircraft. The instructor and student will then auto-rotate down to about 50 feet AGL before engine power is restored and normal flight resumes.

The second training element after proficiency has been achieved in element #1 is auto-rotation all the way to the ground and to a full stop.  This is far more challenging.  With this training phase there is no element of surprise.  The student knows what's going to happen, and the emphasis is on technique and execution.  In a suitable environment such as a wide open and level airfield the helicopter will actually come all the way down to the ground at a high angle of attack (varies depending on model and size), flare pretty dramatically just above the ground, and then skid along the surface (usually grass) to a full stop. The flare maneuver arrests the forward and vertical movements and utilizes the last bits of remaining stored energy in the rotor. From there the helicopter essentially 'falls' to the ground and slows to a stop. Thus, the timing of every step has to be done with precision. Flare too high and you'll drop like a stone. Don't flare enough and you'll impact the ground at I high rate of forward momentum. The idea is to get the helicopter to stop in midair, just above the ground, and then plonk down from mere inches above the surface. When executed properly, they don't skid very far on the ground, usually just a few feet or so.

The principle works because, even though there is no torque being applied to the rotor by the engine, there is still a tremendous amount of stored energy in the rotating rotor mass.  But the weight of the helicopter provides drag on the rotors slowing them down, so the trick is the whole maneuver must be executed while the rotors are still turning.  There's no dilly-dallying around, pilots must commit immediately and execute with precision.

In a real life situation the majority of pilots don't have the luxury of a wide open airfield to execute the procedure, and because it happens so fast, there is little time to pick the best landing zone.  As a result, real world auto-rotations usually result in damage to the aircraft (sometimes significant).  You can sort of visualize it like an emergency landing of a fixed wing aircraft on a busy roadway or a farm field where the conditions are acceptable but not ideal.

I've seen guys execute these procedures in brand new multi-million dollar helicopters they just bought.  In the Hughes 500 series helicopters, Hughes won't even let you take delivery of your new helicopter until you can successfully demonstrate this emergency procedure (with an instructor onboard of course)...all the way to the ground and to a complete stop.  (It's quite the motivational incentive not to fuck up!!) It'll definitely get your heart pumping and your adrenaline flowing!  They get pretty good at it too because they have to demonstrate this dozens of times, and the put the emphasis on landing between two fixed objects (usually lines painted on the ground simulating some sort of obstruction).  They get to where they can have the helicopter come to a halt over a specific mark on the ground.  The Hughes guys do it on hard pavement too, not grass!

(04-11-2025, 07:00 AM)FCD Wrote: Believe it or not, auto-rotation is something you actually do as part of helicopter flight training. 

The landing I saw was very brief and hard, but they were pretty low and immediately made way for the beach. I got five ruptured discs and a bruised coccyx just from watching the video.

There is footage that shows the whole break-up and fall now, though it's at a fair distance.

You can see the whole body do a quick (almost) 180, something seems to fall off midway through that, then as the body swings around it looks like the main rotor pops off and spins away. Hard to see.

Link

(04-11-2025, 04:15 PM)Ksihkehe Wrote: The landing I saw was very brief and hard, but they were pretty low and immediately made way for the beach. I got five ruptured discs and a bruised coccyx just from watching the video.

There is footage that shows the whole break-up and fall now, though it's at a fair distance.

You can see the whole body do a quick (almost) 180, something seems to fall off midway through that, then as the body swings around it looks like the main rotor pops off and spins away. Hard to see.

Link

If you're referring to the video in Hawaii where the sightseeing helo has a complete turbine failure, yes, they did land hard.  In that instance the pilot had to chose a place and it was nearly below them, so he had to make a steep approach so as not to overshoot.  That's a great video BTW, as it exemplifies a number of key points.  It illustrates how much you have to commit, and then stick with it.  No changing plans no matter what.  And, it also indicates how precise your execution has to be, and how a tiny error one way or the other can result in fairly severe consequences.  Lastly, it illustrates just how fast things happen.  The pilot in that video deserves a medal for his nerves of steel.  He did exactly what needed to be done given the circumstances.  Most of the pax walked away with no injuries (although I do believe there was one injury).  In any case, they all survived.  Yes, the airframe was lost, but better the helicopter than the people inside.

Just a quick update:

Pilot was a former Navy SEAL.  Had lots of hours, including wildfire operations in Montana. 

Disciplined, focused and tough beyond words.

Sad day.  RIP warrior.

I've now seen a report that the pilot reported he needed to refuel 15 minutes after departure and was allegedly returning.

Not sure if that's reliable reporting and I don't know how it has anything to do with it breaking up in air, but I've seen it.