Feds Call Helicopter That Crashed in NYC River a ‘Death Trap…

Without power and not immediately aware of the cause, the pilot executed an emergency descent over the East River and a survivable landing, the NTSB found. But one of the skid-mounted emergency floats that the pilot activated failed to properly inflate, causing the helicopter to pitch in its direction and quickly invert in the water. Because the passengers couldn’t free themselves from tightly anchored harnesses, all five drowned. The pilot escaped, as he was wearing a conventional quick-release harness. The victims were Daniel Thompson, 34; Tristan Hill, 29; Carla Vallejos Blanco, 29; Trevor Cadigan, 26; and Brian McDaniel, 26.

The subsequent investigation by the NTSB found a bounty of safety deficiencies, ranging from the aircraft’s setup to the operational strategies that made the disaster possible. Beyond that, the crash has, according to one NTSB member, implications for the future airborne systems, like electric air taxis that will require the kind of oversight that the FAA appears not to be exhibiting with operators like FlyNYON. (I was a passenger on another FlyNYON flight that evening, and provided testimony to the investigation.)

The board found that the fuel cutoff valve should be protected from inadvertent activation, and recommended a review of the design of the flotation system, as an “installation anomaly” prevented them from being able to fully inflate.

But the safety review focused on how the tethers that kept occupants from falling out of the helicopter also kept them from escaping when they were submerged in the 40-degree water of the East River. The report says the carabiners (which are not approved by the FAA for aviation use) were attached to the back of the passengers’ harnesses, so they couldn’t be easily reached or unlocked by passengers suffering from cold shock and generally unaware of how the tethering mechanisms functioned. Moreover, the knives provided to passengers in case they needed to cut themselves free were “ineffective,” the NTSB found. (The investigation did not find evidence that the passengers attempted to use the knives.)

“There’s just an anti-safety attitude there, and I don’t think they should be operating.”

National Transportation Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy

The investigators also note that FlyNYON pilots had alerted company CEO Patrick Day Jr. to these harness issues in the months leading up to the crash. Day dismissed their concerns and mocked the pilots as “snowflakes,” according to the NTSB, which provided transcripts of FlyNYON staff meetings among nearly 1,200 pages of evidence it released in September. This evidence also includes interviews, wreckage analysis, pathological reports, emails, and a harrowing transcript of the flight, as extracted from a GoPro camera mounted inside the cabin.

The NTSB found that FlyNYON and Liberty “exploited” a regulatory loophole. The rules that allow photo-oriented flights—which typically operate with doors open or removed completely so photographers have free range of movement and aren’t shooting through plexiglass—are meant for professional photographers, who would have extra training and proper harnessing gear. But the definitions of the terms “aerial work” and “aerial photography” don’t explicitly restrict the work to professionals in business operations. The safety report says the companies “demonstrated deliberate efforts … to avoid any indication that the flights may be commercial air tours, which would be subject to additional FAA requirements and oversight. These would have required explicit approval by the FAA for every aspect of the operation, and involved far greater expense and time on the part of FlyNYON.

Just one example: FlyNYON purchased its passenger harnesses from Home Depot—they’re primarily fall-protection harnesses for construction workers—instead of acquiring far pricier aviation-specific harnesses with quick-release mechanisms. The tethers and carabiners were from mountain-climbing gear suppliers, and were incompatible with the knives supplied to cut them in an emergency. If FlyNYON were operating as an air tour operation, the FAA would have inspected and approved the entire restraint system, including the backups and emergency procedures, as well as the maintenance of all those elements.

NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy slammed the FAA for its lax oversight of the two companies, especially since FlyNYON has continued its operations. “There should not be a safety exemption for air tour operators,” she said in an interview after the public hearing, citing several additional recent accidents including a midair collision in Alaska in May involving aircraft carrying passengers from a cruise ship, and the crash of the vintage B-17 bomber in Connecticut in October. “In all these instances people are looking to have fun. They should not be expected to know anything about aviation.”

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