New York Helicopter Tours is the company that offers tourist flights over the Big Apple where a family of five Spaniards and the pilot died in the aircraft.
The company's aircraft had experienced two in-flight failures in the last 12 years, as reported by the New York Times, and this Thursday's incident must be added.
The helicopter charter company has a long history of providing these services, some of which have had safety issues.
In 2013, one of their aircraft was carrying a family of four on a sightseeing tour when it suddenly lost power. It had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side of Manhattan, as reported by the mentioned media.
In this incident, a family of four Swedish tourists was on a sightseeing tour on a Sunday morning in June, in a red Bell 206 helicopter that took off from a heliport near Wall Street.
Two years later, another of their helicopters crashed while flying about six meters above the ground, after taking off in northern New Jersey.
In that episode, the pilot reported that the helicopter started spinning out of control before making a "forced landing." An investigation revealed that the same aircraft had been involved in another forced landing in Chile in 2010. A report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that an "unfit for flight" transmission shaft had been installed.
The investigation found that the defective transmission shaft had been painted by the previous owner, making it impossible to know if it had been part of the helicopter during the forced landing.
Investigators concluded that the probable cause of the accident was "deliberate concealment and reuse" of the defective component "by unknown personnel."
The helicopter involved in that accident was a Bell 206 model that New York Helicopter Tours had rented from Meridian Helicopters, a Louisiana-based company. Records indicate that Meridian also owns the helicopter that crashed into the Hudson yesterday.
The possible causes of this latest catastrophe have not been disclosed, but agencies like AP provide witness testimony of the helicopter falling into the river.
Bruce Wall said he saw the helicopter "coming apart" in mid-air, with the tail and main rotor detaching. The main rotor kept spinning, separated from the helicopter, as it fell.
Dani Horbiak was at home in Jersey City when he heard what sounded like "a series of shots, almost, in the air." He looked out the window and saw several parts of the helicopter crashing into the water.
The helicopter was spinning out of control and "a lot of smoke was coming out" before hitting the water, as recounted by Lesly Camacho, who works at a restaurant on the riverbank in Hoboken, New Jersey.
On the air traffic control radio, a New York Police helicopter pilot can be heard saying, "Attention, you have an aircraft down. Holland Tunnel. Please be on the lookout for anyone in the water." But there were no survivors.