Yesterday afternoon, Thursday April 10, at 3:15 pm local time, a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River near Jersey City, New York. It was a Bell 206L-4 Long Ranger IV, registration N216MH, of Meridian Helicopters, operated by the tourist company New York Helicopters Tours, built in 2004. The Bell is a family of single and twin-engine helicopters with a two-blade rotor, developed by the American company Bell Helicopter Textron between the late 1970s and 2017.

According to witnesses, 15 minutes after takeoff from the Downtown Manhattan/Wall St. Heliport, while in cruise flight, the aircraft lost one of the main rotor blades, crashing upside down into the Hudson River. On board a family of five tourists from Barcelona and the 36-year-old pilot. Those killed included Agustin Escobar, the director of the European automation company Siemens, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children, 4, 5, and 11 years old. The pilot's identity has not yet been disclosed.

Michael Roth, ceo of New York Helicopter Tours, told the "Telegraph" that the pilot had communicated via radio to the base the intention to return quickly to the heliport, within 3 minutes, due to lack of fuel, "but 20 minutes later he still had not returned", he concluded. Therefore, the investigations to clarify the causes of the tragedy are twofold: on the one hand a technical problem, on the other the crash caused by the fuel running out in flight.

Below, the video of the accident: