The videos from witnesses are harrowing: the body of the helicopter plunging into the Hudson, leaving no escape for those on board. Five Spanish tourists visiting Manhattan, including three children, perished in the crash, as well as the aircraft’s pilot.
It was supposed to be just another sightseeing trip to view the city from above. Agustín Escobar and Mercé Camprubí Montal, two high-ranking executives at the German electronics firm Siemens in Spain, died along with their three children, aged 4, 8, and 10. The tour, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said, had been organized to celebrate the birthday of the middle child, who would have been 9 on Friday. The bodies were recovered from the frigid waters of the river; two people were still alive when rescuers arrived but died shortly afterward.
The Spanish family were part of the industrial aristocracy of Spain. Based in the Catalan city of Barcelona, Escobar was originally from the Southern industrial town of Puertollano. He had recently taken up the post of CEO of rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, following a two-year stint as president and CEO of the German technology firm in Spain. Camprubí Montal, a Barcelona native, also held a senior post at Siemens. She had been a global commercialization manager with the company for just over three years and came from an influential family in the city known for textile manufacturing as well as its association with FC Barcelona, one of the biggest teams in world soccer. Her great-grandfather, Agustí Montal Galobart, was president of the club in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her brother, Joan, last year had been cited as a possible contender as president of the team.
Escobar and Camprubí Montal had traveled extensively for their jobs. Escobar had recently been in the UK and India, and had worked in Latin America and the United States over the course of his 27 years at Siemens.
A video shows the helicopter spinning on itself and crashing at high speed into the water, just off Jersey City, New Jersey, around 3:15 p.m. on Thursday. Witnesses reported hearing a loud boom and seeing the helicopter hit the river, missing at least one of its rotor blades.
“Six innocent souls lost their lives, and we pray for them and their families,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
It was the deadliest helicopter accident in New York City in the past seven years. The aircraft, a Bell 206, was operated by New York Helicopter, which offers sightseeing helicopter tours costing between $250 and $400 per person per flight.
The company’s CEO, Michael Roth, stated he did not know what had happened to the aircraft, which had been leased from a Louisiana-based company. The investigation into the accident is being led by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Photos released by New York Helicopter show the Spanish family smiling right before boarding the aircraft.
Flight tracking data shows that the helicopter took off from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, near the southern tip of Manhattan, at 2:59 p.m. It flew over the Statue of Liberty, traveled north along Manhattan’s West coast up to the George Washington Bridge, and was heading south along the New Jersey coastline when it crashed.
Mandy Bowlin, visiting from Chattanooga, Tennessee, told the New York Times that she was on a Circle Line sightseeing boat when she heard a boom behind her and saw the helicopter fall. A rotor blade detached, and the aircraft plunged into the water, she reported. Peter Park, a Jersey City resident, said he heard “a loud boom” around 3:15 p.m. and saw from his window a craft emitting black smoke. He then saw the detached blades fall into the river, so close to the New Jersey shore that he feared they might hit someone.
Police boats, other emergency vehicles, and divers quickly rushed to the scene, surrounding the overturned helicopter.
Every year, tens of thousands of sightseeing helicopter flights depart from heliports in and around New York, offering the chance to view landmarks like Central Park, One World Trade Center, and the Statue of Liberty from above in just 15 minutes.
This crash was the third deadliest accident in the New York helicopter tour industry over the past twenty years. In 2009, a sightseeing helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine people aboard both aircraft. In another accident from 2018, a doorless sightseeing helicopter crashed into the East River, killing five passengers, with only the pilot surviving. Since 1977, at least 32 people have died in helicopter crashes in New York City, according to the Associated Press.
