The helicopter that crashed into New York City’s Hudson River on Thursday – killing all six on board, including three children – lacked flight recorders, said the US’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
It was also on its eighth tour flight of the day, having already completed seven, according to federal investigators.
No video or camera recorders have been recovered from the Bell 206 helicopter, the NTSB said in an update late on Saturday – and none of the equipment on it had recorded information that would help the investigation.
At a press conference on Sunday, Chuck Schumer, a New York senator, said the company, New York Helicopter Tours, should be required to halt all flights as the NTSB investigates the deadly crash.
The Senate Democratic minority leader also called on the Federal Aviation Administration to ramp up safety inspections for other helicopter tour companies, accusing them of “cutting corners and putting profits over people”.
“One of the things we can do to honor those lives and try to save others is to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Schumer said. “We know there is one thing for sure about New York City’s helicopter tour companies: they have a deadly track record.”
New York police divers were continuing to search for parts of the helicopter, including the main rotor, gear box, tail rotor and the tail boom, the safety agency said.
The aircraft had its last major inspection done on 1 March.
Divers recovered the victims as well as the pilot from the submerged helicopter. Four people were declared dead at the scene while the remaining two died later after they were transported to nearby hospitals.
The passengers killed in the crash were the senior Siemens executive Agustín Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí (who was celebrating her 40th birthday), and their three children aged 10, eight and four. The pilot Seankese Johnson, a navy veteran, was also killed.
Some parts that have been recovered and sent to NTSB laboratories in Washington for inspection include the cockpit, cabin, horizontal stabilizer finlets, the vertical fin and a portion of the tail boom, according to the NTSB update.
Investigators examined two similar helicopters as part of the investigation and met with representatives of New York Helicopter Charter, the operator of the crashed chopper, to review operational records, policies and procedures, safety management systems and the pilot’s experience, the agency said.
The chief executive of the operator told the UK’s Telegraph that the pilot was landing and had indicated that he needed fuel sometime before the crash – though he made it clear he did not know exactly why aircraft came down.
The helicopter took off at about 3pm local time on Thursday from a downtown helicopter pad and flew north along the Hudson, the New York police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, has said.
After reaching the George Washington Bridge, it turned south but crashed shortly afterwards, hitting the water upside down near lower Manhattan, just off Jersey City, at about 3.15pm.
The president of New York Helicopter Tours, Michael Roth, did not respond to phone and email inquiries. The company said in a statement published on its website that it was cooperating with authorities in the investigation.
It was one of at least three deadly aviation crashes to generate news headlines in the US in recent days.
In upstate New York on Saturday, a twin-engine plane with six people crashed near the community of Copake. Officials said the crash was deadly but did not immediately indicate how many deaths were involved.
On Friday morning in Boca Raton, Florida, three members of a family died after a small plane crashed near Interstate 95. A family statement reported on by the Florida news station WPTV identified those killed in that crash as Robert Stark, 81; Stephen Stark, 54; and Brooke Stark, 17. They were grandfather, father and daughter.
Experts say flying commercially remains the safest mode of transportation statistically speaking. Nonetheless, many in the US public have been particularly attentive to aviation crashes ever since the January collision outside Washington DC between a passenger airplane and a military helicopter that killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft near Ronald Reagan airport.
The federal government subsequently banned helicopter operations along the route involved in the crash near Reagan airport.
In the last two decades, five helicopters on commercial sightseeing flights have fallen into the Hudson and East rivers as a result of mechanical failures, pilot errors or collisions, killing 20 people.
Reuters contributed reporting
