Just moments after a routine radio call for fuel, a helicopter carrying six people, including children, vanished from the radar. Minutes later, its wreckage was found in the Hudson River, and every life on board was lost.
What began as a scenic helicopter tour for a visiting Spanish family ended in tragedy over the waters of the Hudson River on Thursday, April 10. Agustin Escobar, a Siemens executive, his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three young children — ages 4, 5, and 11 — were among the six victims aboard the aircraft.
The family had set out for what was meant to be a picturesque aerial journey above New York City. Instead, the outing took a devastating turn. The helicopter, which had taken off from a downtown Manhattan skyport around 3:00 p.m., crashed into the river minutes later while reportedly en route to refuel. All five passengers and the pilot, whose identity has not been disclosed, were killed. According to Michael Roth, the owner of New York Helicopter, the company that operated the tour, the pilot radioed in shortly before the incident.
“He called in that he was landing and that he needed fuel,” Roth told The Telegraph. “It should have taken him about three minutes to arrive, but 20 minutes later, he didn’t arrive.” Emergency services were first alerted at 3:17 p.m., just minutes after the helicopter lost contact. Roth later received confirmation of the worst when another pilot flew over the Hudson and spotted the aircraft upside down in the water. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the aircraft had “lost control and hit the water.”
Investigators believe the helicopter followed a typical sightseeing path — flying over Governor’s Island, circling near the Statue of Liberty, and continuing north up the Hudson River. It reportedly turned around near the George Washington Bridge and flew back south along the Jersey City shoreline before disaster struck. Roth said the crash has devastated the company. “Every employee in our company is devastated. My wife has not stopped crying,” he said. “The death of the child of any human being is a monumental disaster.” Authorities are now working to determine what caused the crash during what should have been a routine flight. Aviation experts are beginning to piece together the possible mechanical failures behind the helicopter crash, offering early insights into what may have gone wrong in the air.
An aviation analyst, Kyle Bailey, suggested that a catastrophic rotor blade separation could have been the cause. If the blades had detached mid-flight, they may have severed the helicopter’s tail boom. A scenario that would render the aircraft uncontrollable.
JP Tristani, another aviation expert, described such a failure as unsurvivable. “If that articulating head actually separated from the aircraft, the aircraft was doomed,” he explained. “There’s no possibility of that aircraft ever having made a normal type of landing. It was going to crash.”
Tristani added that losing the rotor head or even a single blade leaves the aircraft in freefall. “You’re just a falling brick. You don’t have a chance in hell.” The helicopter was in the air for approximately 16 minutes before plunging into the Hudson River, according to data from FlightRadar24 and CNN’s flight analysis.
