The pilot of a sightseeing helicopter that crashed into New York’s Hudson River on Thursday killing all six people onboard reportedly sent a radio message moments earlier saying he was low on fuel and was heading back to the helipad, its operators said on Friday.
Michael Roth, the chief executive of New York Helicopter Tours, described how the pilot never made it back to the downtown Manhattan heliport it took off from about 16 minutes previously on its sixth flight of the day, the Telegraph reported.
“He called in that he was landing and that he needed fuel, and it should have taken him about three minutes to arrive, but 20 minutes later, he didn’t arrive,” Roth told the UK outlet. However, he does not know exactly why the chopper came down.
As well as the pilot, the crash killed five members of a Spanish family. The victims were identified as Agustín Escobar, an executive of the technology company Siemens, his wife, Mercè Camprubí, who was celebrating her 40th birthday, and their three children, aged 10, eight and four, according to Eric Adams, the New York mayor.
The middle child would have celebrated their ninth birthday on Friday, Adams said.
Steven Fulop, the Jersey City mayor, said a relative was arriving from Spain on Friday to take home the family members’ remains.
The pilot has not yet been officially named, and the firm did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.
But a report on Friday afternoon from the Gothamist identified the pilot as Sean Johnson, a 36-year-old veteran of the Navy Seals who had recently moved to New York City to continue his aviation career, according to family members and his Facebook profile.
Johnson’s wife, Kathryn, told the outlet that after his military career he took on a variety of jobs, including on a TV show and as a bodyguard for celebrities – but that through it all, Johnson “always wanted to fly”,
Kathryn said that she was struggling to process news of his death. “ It’s just hard right now,” she said.
Divers returned to the river early on Friday morning to salvage sections of the helicopter. Fulop said “major parts” of the Bell 206 chopper broke apart in midair and plunged into the water.
Videos posted on social media captured large chunks of the helicopter, including rotor blades spinning independently of the fuselage, falling from the sky and splashing into the river on Thursday afternoon, not long after the tourist flight had taken off from a popular heliport at the tip of Manhattan.
Other footage showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding the streets in New Jersey as emergency workers raced in.
The Hudson River divides the west side of Manhattan from New Jersey and flows into New York harbor past the Statue of Liberty. The weather on Thursday afternoon featured gray skies, light winds and cold rain.
On Friday, witnesses spoke of the shocking moments shortly after 3pm when the sightseeing helicopter, operated by New York Helicopter Tours, broke into pieces about 16 minutes into flight.
“I heard very loud sounds, I thought it had to be gunshots, it was that level loud,” Dani Horbiak told ABC’s Good Morning America.
“When I looked out my window I saw a helicopter falling into pieces. It all happened in seconds.”
Another witness, Bruce Wall, said he also saw the helicopter breaking up in flight.
“I heard some crackling, looked up, and I just see a plane falling apart,” he said. “The tail broke off and the plane tumbled into the water with the propeller still in the air.”
Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were on site and leading the investigation, and that the aircraft was not being monitored by air traffic controllers on the ground at the time it crashed.
Tributes were paid in Spain to Escobar, 49, chief executive of rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, and his family, who were enjoying a sightseeing excursion of New York City.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, posted to X on Friday: “We have had devastating news about the helicopter accident in the Hudson River.
“Five Spaniards from the same family, three of them children, lost their lives along with the pilot. It’s an unimaginable tragedy. I share the pain of the victims’ loved ones in this heartbreaking moment.”
Spain’s transport minister, Óscar Puente, said : “Reading with horror that the victims of the awful helicopter accident in the US were Agustín Escobar and his family. I met him over the past year in his capacity at Siemens Spain. He was a charming, hard-working and talented person.”
The German industrial conglomerate Siemens confirmed that Escobar worked for the company as head of rail infrastructure at its mobility division.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic helicopter crash in which Agustín Escobar and his family lost their lives,” Siemens said in a statement.
Camprubí, Escobar’s wife, was a global manager at an energy technology company.
Fulop said in a post to X on Friday that Escobar was in New York for work, and his family joined him for some leisure time.
“I’m sharing this because life moves quick and we don’t always think about the fact it is unpredictable and extremely fragile,” he wrote.
“The husband was here for a business trip and the family flew out to extend the trip a couple days in NYC. They were celebrating the mom’s 40th birthday with the tourist helicopter flight.”
Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, said most of the passengers were already dead when they were removed from the water, but two were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died soon after.
Tisch said the helicopter took off from a downtown helicopter pad at about 3pm and flew north over the Hudson. It turned south when it reached the George Washington Bridge and crashed minutes later, hitting the water upside down and sinking near Lower Manhattan about 3.15pm, just off Hoboken, New Jersey.
Justin Green, an aviation lawyer and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, told the AP: “There’s no indication they had any control over the craft. No pilot could have prevented that accident once they lost the lifts. It’s like a rock falling to the ground.”
Green added that videos of the crash suggest a “catastrophic mechanical failure” and it is possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall.
The agency said at least 38 people had died in helicopter accidents in New York City since 1977. A collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed nine people, and five died in 2018 when a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights went down into the East River.
