NEW YORK — The company that owned the helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River in New York City has shut down operations effective Sunday.
The crash on April 10 killed all on board - the pilot and a family of five from Spain.
The pilot was identified as Seankese Johnson, a Navy SEAL veteran and the tourists were Agustín Escobar and Mercè Camprubí Montal, two executives of Siemens, and their three children.
Johnson had had his commercial helicopter license since 2023 had been with the company for only a few weeks.
Earlier on Sunday, New York Senator Chuck Schumer had called for the company — New York Helicopter — to stop all flights as the National Transportation Safety Board investigated.
Schumer has also called for the FAA to increase safety inspections on other tour companies.
It is unclear if it is a permanent or temporary shutdown. According to the company’s website, it is referring all questions investigators.
The tours are popular with visitors by giving them a birds-eye-view of the city’s landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center. There have been five helicopter crashes from either mechanical issues, pilot errors, or collisions over the past 20 years that have killed 20 people.
Eastern Region Helicopter Council said the helicopters that fly over Manhattan “already operate under the most stringent of regulations.”
New York City limits the number of helicopter flights that take off in Manhattan to 30,000 each year. When that regulation went into effect in 2016, many companies moved operations to New Jersey.
New York Helicopter did not release a statement about the shutdown, but had previously said it would cooperate during the investigation.
The cause of the crash last week has not been determined. Crews are still looking for the helicopter’s main rotor and assembly gear box.
The helicopter with tail number N216MH was brought to the city in 2019 and since then had flown more than 2,600 hours, mostly 10 to 15 minute flights over the Hudson River and landing at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. It typically did the flight from the end of Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty, up the Hudson, then back to the heliport 18 times a day, with sometimes as little as three minutes between flights. It was the helicopter’s eighth flight of the day when it crashed.
The helicopter’s last major inspection was March 1.
The NTSB said there were no flight recorders and “no onboard video recorders or camera recorders have been recovered and none of the helicopter’s avionics onboard recorded information that could be used for the investigation.”
Investigators are reassembling the wreckage to see if they can determine the cause of the crash. They are also looking at the aircraft’s flight control system.
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