The doomed tourist helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River last month, killing six people, erupted with “loud bangs” before breaking apart into three pieces, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report Wednesday.
Witnesses told the NTSB that they heard the loud noises coming from the New York Helicopter Tours chopper as it was flying over the Hudson moments before the deadly crash on April 10, the NTSB’s report said.
Immediately after the “bangs” were heard, surveillance cameras captured the moment the helicopter split into three major sections: the fuselage, the main rotor, and the tail boom.
The wreckage of the Bell 206 chopper plummeted into the Hudson just 17 minutes after it departed.
The NTSB has yet to reveal the conclusive cause of the deadly crash, with officials saying that the case remains under investigation.
Along with the haunting details of the sounds heard leading up to the crash, the NTSB also found that the pilot, Sean Johnson, had just come back from a 10-day break before the ill-fated trip.
Johnson, who had more than 790 hours of experience, would fly for 10 days and then take 10 days off, not an uncommon schedule for pilots, the NTSB said.
The helicopter also appeared to have all its inspections up to date, with the chopper only logging 50 hours since its last check in late February.
The helicopter took off from Manhattan’s Downtown Skyport on April 10, with Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, and their three young children — Augustin, 10, Mercedes, 8, and Victor, 4 — on board.
The family, who hailed from Barcelona, Spain, were flown by Johnson, 36, a Navy veteran who recently moved to the Big Apple for his aviation career.
New York Helicopter CEO Michael Roth has said he has “no clue why” his chopper malfunctioned and crashed mid-flight. The company has since shuttered.
