The pilot flying the tour helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River yesterday, killing six people including a family of five, warned his base that the chopper needed to refuel.
Tragic eyewitness reports documented how the helicopter in question “split in half” before plunging down near Pier 40 at around 3:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 10. The six on board, consisting of Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal and their three children, aged four, five and 11, as well as the 36-year-old pilot, all lost their lives.
Escobar was the the CEO of Rail Infrastructure at Siemens Mobility and former president of the Spanish branch of the technology company. As per the Daily Mail, he and his family had arrived in New York from Barcelona earlier in the day of the fatal accident.
The helicopter was reportedly in the air for approximately 16 minutes on a sightseeing tour, taking off from Wall Street Heliport and circling the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge.
A new update reveals that the pilot radioed back to base to alert them to the fact that the chopper was already short on fuel just minutes into the trip.
71-year-old Michael Roth, owner of New York Helicopter, a company that provides sky tours of the Big Apple, told The Telegraph that the pilot – yet to be identified – had contacted the base to tell them the group were returning to the helipad. Tragically, they never made it.
“He [the pilot] 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 explained.
“We’re all devastated. Every employee in our company is devastated. My wife has not stopped crying,” he added. “I got a call from my manager and my downtown heliport and she said she heard there was a crash, and then my phone blew up from everybody.
“Then one of my pilots flew over the Hudson and saw the helicopter upside down.
“The death of the child of any human being, is a monumental disaster.”
Other reports have claimed that the helicopter appeared to break apart in mid-air, with a video uploaded to social media appearing to show the tail and rotors of the aircraft becoming detached.
Roth told the New York Post he had “no clue” how the disaster had come to pass.
“The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,” he said.
Heartbreaking photos of the family who perished in the crash have since surfaced online, including one showing them posing on the helipad and inside the aircraft before lift-off.
NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisc told in a news briefing yesterday that the aircraft “lost control and hit the water.”
One eyewitness told ABC News: “It sounded like a sonic boom so I look up and literally I saw helicopter splitting in 2, with the rotor flying off in the sky it was going so fast and it just went straight into the water. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Rest in peace to the six who lost their lives in this tragic incident.
