Nine people were killed today after a sightseeing helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided in mid-air with a small plane near New York and crashed into the Hudson river.
Eyewitnesses saw a wing come off the plane during the collision just after noon US time and watched as the helicopter "fell like a stone" into the river.
Five Italian tourists and the pilot were aboard the helicopter; in the plane, along with the pilot, there were two passengers, one of whom was a child. Another pilot on the ground at the heliport saw the plane approaching and tried to radio an alert to the helicopter above. But the warning was either not heard, or failed to get through in time.
The collision took place just south of the stretch of river where a US Airways jet that had run into trouble after apparently hitting a flock of geese was ditched in January by its pilot, who was hailed as a hero for saving the lives of all 150 people on board.
Two bodies were recovered but there was no hope of finding survivors, said New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who described the incident as "not survivable".
He said that police had found one piece of wreckage in the murky waters of the Hudson and that the search would probably continue for a few days.
"This has changed from a rescue to a recovery mission. There's not going to be a happy ending," he added.
The plane, which was a single-engine Piper PA-32R-300, had taken off earlier from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and was flying south along the river when it appeared to lose control as it banked steeply and struck the helicopter close to the shore line of Hoboken, New Jersey.
The helicopter, operated by Liberty Helicopter, the largest sightseeing and charter helicopter operator in the north-east US, had taken off moments earlier from West 30th Street in Manhattan.
Hundreds of people on both sides of the mile-wide river watched as the two aircraft appeared to break apart, with the rotary blades detaching from the helicopter, opposite the west side of Manhattan.
On the waterfront at Hoboken, people scattered as pieces of the debris fell from the sky while a wheel from one of the aircraft lay on Hoboken's Sinatra Drive.
"I saw the plane coming down and the helicopter coming across," said Hilda Igartua, 53, of Union City, New Jersey, who added that the plane's trajectory did not change after the collision but the helicopter came apart and spun down in pieces.
"We saw the helicopter propellers fly all over," said Katie Tanski, of Hoboken.
Melissa Green, 33, and her husband were in a park along the river on the New York side and heard the crash. "We turned around and saw these two mushroom splashes," Green said.
"What was really weird is there was no wreckage, nothing. I hope they find the people, but I don't know. They just disappeared," she explained.
"First I saw a piece of something flying through the air. Then I saw the helicopter going down into the water," she said, adding that the crowd in the park seemed too stunned to react. "I thought it was my imagination."
The weather at the time of the collision was clear and mild. Vessels including water taxis diverted to the scene of the accident along with fire boats and Coast Guard rescue teams but both of the aircraft sank quickly under a strong current.
Police divers were carrying out a search of the river as an investigation was launched by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The accident happened in a busy general aviation corridor over the river that is often filled with sightseeing craft on sunny days.
Pilots have some freedom to pick their own route, as long as they stay under 300m and do not stray too close to Manhattan's skyscrapers.
Accidents are not frequent, but happen every few years. Cory Lidle, a pitcher for the New York Yankees baseball team, and his flight instructor died in 2006 when their plane hit a skyscraper while flying along a popular sightseeing route.
Two years ago, a Liberty helicopter fell 150m to the ground during another sightseeing trip. The pilot was credited with safely landing the aircraft in the Hudson and helping evacuate the seven passengers.
In 1997, a rotor on one of its sightseeing helicopters clipped a Manhattan building, forcing an emergency landing. No one was hurt.
0 comments:
Post a Comment