The crash of a vacationer helicopter on New York’s Hudson River on Thursday that killed a pilot and a Spanish household of 5 was “completely predictable”, in response to advocates who’re calling for the closure of the area’s three heliports to non-essential visitors.
“Numerous these helicopters are 30 and even 40 years previous, and this one was 21 years previous, which remains to be fairly previous,” stated Andrew Rosenthal, the chair of the Cease the Chop group that has campaigned for an finish to helicopter sightseeing journeys over New York Metropolis and the New York-New Jersey metropolitan space.
“In New York when you have a yellow cab it’s a must to get a brand new one each 5 to eight years, but right here we’re letting this stuff fly within the sky at 30 and 40 years of age. There’s no age restrict that I’m conscious of, which is loopy.
“This was completely predictable, and preventable. If we had a rollercoaster that killed individuals each two years, we’d not hold it working, but we now have the identical sort of pleasure experience within the sky that kills individuals each couple of years, and we hold altering nothing,” he stated.
Investigators are working to determine the reason for Thursday’s crash, through which witnesses reported seeing the helicopter break up in midair and plunge in items into the river that runs between the west facet of Manhattan and the jap shore of New Jersey.
In line with the Related Press, no less than 38 individuals have died in helicopter accidents in New York Metropolis since 1977.
A collision between a airplane and a vacationer helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed 9 individuals, and 5 died in 2018 when a constitution helicopter providing “open door” flights went down into metropolis’s the East River.
Cease the Chop has documented a succession of different non-fatal incidents involving helicopters in and round New York Metropolis lately, and Rosenthal stated it was past time that metropolis officers ended tourism flights from the downtown Manhattan heliport from which the Bell 206 chopper took off on Thursday, and two different public-use helipads on the island of Manhattan.
In line with the Aviation Property Community, a specialist actual property firm, the amenities generate a mixed $2.7m yearly for New York in lease funds from corporations that function greater than 42,000 sightseeing journeys yearly.
“The mayor can shut down the Manhattan downtown heliport tonight, if he needed to, one stroke of a pen and no different laws wanted,” stated Rosenthal, whose group stated greater than 30,000 of the flights took off from there.
“This isn’t the primary crash, it’s one other one in a protracted sequence. It’s predictable. It’s going to occur once more, it’s only a matter of numbers. We’re OK with police, army, authorities, information, these are thought-about important in our definition, however these non-essential flights are completely not wanted.”
Eric Adams, the New York mayor, was requested about sightseeing flights on Friday on the Good Day New York TV present.
“After any type of malfunction, crash or problem, typically that’s [the] quick thought … we must always ban the helicopters or we must always not have this tourism kind of attraction in our metropolis,” he stated.
“We now have 65 million vacationers that got here into the town final 12 months. That is all a part of the attraction of being in New York. Individuals need to see the town from the sky.
“What’s essential is that any airport or any air gadget, that’s executed with the correct upkeep and correct security. And that’s what this investigation goes to find out.”
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