Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll get details on the crash of a sightseeing helicopter in the Hudson River. We’ll also find out about new “quality of life” teams that the Police Department plans to deploy to fight minor crimes.
Thousands of sightseeing flights take off from the heliports in and around New York City every year. The passengers oooh and ahhh as they cruise over landmarks like the Statue of Liberty. They pick out the Empire State Building, One World Trade Center and the Brooklyn Bridge. They pay around $400 a person for as much as 25 minutes in the sky.
It was one such flight that went down on Thursday, at least the third fatal incident involving a sightseeing helicopter in the city in the last 15 years. Aboard the aircraft, a Bell 206, were Augustín Escobar, the president of the Spanish branch of the technology company Siemens, and his wife and their three children, two officials said. The family was killed, as was the pilot, who was not identified.
The helicopter took off from Lower Manhattan and flew as high as 1,200 feet before dropping to about 600 feet, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking database. Its speed was 102 miles an hour just before the drop in altitude.
On the ground, witnesses described the flight’s final moments. Some said they heard a loud noise and saw the helicopter drop into the river without its rotor. Peter Park, who works about a block from the Hudson in Jersey City, said he saw black smoke trailing from an aircraft — and the unattached rotors falling into the water.
Mandy Bowlin, visiting New York from Chattanooga, Tenn., listened as the announcer on her Circle Line tour boat told passengers that they had passed the site of the “Miracle on the Hudson” landing, the 2009 splashdown of a US Airways jet that had taken off from LaGuardia Airport. Off one side of the boat, they saw the helicopter nose-diving into the water and debris raining down.
The helicopter had been in the air for about 15 minutes. It had taken off from the city-owned heliport at Pier 6 in Lower Manhattan that was renamed the Downtown Skyport last week after a new company took over operations there, replacing one that had run the facility for 18 years. Not all of the heliport’s flights are for tourism: It is where Marine One touches down when a president travels to Manhattan and where a government helicopter carrying Luigi Mangione landed after he was arrested in Pennsylvania and extradited to face charges in the shooting of an insurance executive on a Manhattan street last December.
The city and the new operator of the heliport see a future of electric-powered copters and a so-called “blue highway” there where barges could drop off shipments of packages for delivery in Lower Manhattan. That would mean fewer trucks would go into Lower Manhattan. It would also mean less noise, because officials say the electric-powered craft would be quieter than conventional helicopters.
But electric-powered copters have yet to receive federal approval for commercial flights. The helicopter that went down on Thursday was operated by New York Helicopter Charter, a local excursion company, said Michael Roth, the company’s chief executive. Roth said he did not know what had gone wrong with the aircraft, which his company had leased from its Louisiana-based owner.
Weather
Expect a rainy day with temperatures in the high 40s. The temperature will drop to around 38 tonight as the rain continues into Saturday.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Saturday (Passover).
The latest New York news
-
Tug of war in Mangione case: State and federal prosecutors have both accused Luigi Mangione of killing an insurance executive in Manhattan. With Attorney General Pam Bondi signaling that the Justice Department will seek the death penalty, the case could put the two sets of prosecutors on a collision course.
-
A bill to build more bathrooms: New York City has far fewer public toilets, in proportion to its population, than many other cities around the world. The City Council passed a bill Thursday that aims to double the number of public restrooms in the city by 2035.
-
Fighting to save a Catholic school: The religious order that owns Preston High School in the Bronx, from which Jennifer Lopez graduated in 1987, recently announced it could no longer operate. Supporters are now appealing to the New York attorney general for help.
-
What we’re watching: On “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts,” Oren Cass, a conservative economist, discusses his views on President Trump’s tariffs and the Republican Party’s evolving ideology, and Edmund Lee, a Times editor, talks about building and fostering trust in the news. The program is broadcast at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. [CUNY TV]
New police teams will fight minor crimes
Next week the New York Police Department will start sending out teams to crack down on minor crimes like homeless encampments and public urination. Critics say the program will give the police license to harass low-income people.
Police officials said the new Quality of Life division would go into operation on Monday with six commands across the city, including one covering several housing developments. The program will dispatch officers to respond to 311 complaints, which officials say have risen steadily even though major violent crimes have dropped. Last week Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, said the number of shootings in the first three months of 2025 was the lowest since 1994.
The new units are drawing criticism even before they hit the streets. Advocates of police reform fear the new “Q Teams” will be like the street crime units of a quarter-century ago, when Rudolph Giuliani was mayor and Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from West Africa, was shot to death by four white officers assigned to such a unit.
Tisch said on Thursday that the new division was not part of a “zero tolerance” policing philosophy, but rather a response to complaints that the city feels unsafe. And Mayor Eric Adams said the initiative would take public safety “to the next level.”
“We will not tolerate an atmosphere where anything and everything goes,” he said at a news conference with Tisch.
Tisch foreshadowed the new division in her “State of the N.Y.P.D.” address in January. After a pilot phase, the program will expand to cover the entire city. That will require a reorganization of nearly 2,000 members of the Police Department, Tisch said. The department is also introducing “QStat,” a system to track quality-of-life complaints the same way that the Police Department’s CompStat database tracks criminal complaints.
METROPOLITAN diary
Hey, Hey
Dear Diary:
On July 15, 1967, my brother drove my best friend and me, two 13-year-old girls, to Forest Hills Stadium to see the Monkees. We rode squeezed into his 1957 TR-3 with the top down.
The show was one of eight that Jimi Hendrix opened for the band, but we went to see them, and Davy Jones, my idol, in particular.
The next morning, Sunday, we and about 20 other fans waited outside the Waldorf Astoria, where the band was staying. Jimi Hendrix emerged from the hotel first. He signed autographs as he walked to a cab. Then I caught a glimpse of Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith.
Davy Jones came out next and got into a cab alone. As it drove off, I ran after it up the empty avenue. Out of breath, I caught up to it at a red light.
Davy was sitting in the rear seat with the window open. We looked at each other. I didn’t know what to say. One word came out: “Shake.”
I stuck my hand through the window, and Davy Jones shook it. The light turned green, and the taxi drove off, leaving me with the indelible memory of his hand in mine and the look of his beautiful eyes.
— Dinah Wells
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post A Fatal Helicopter Crash in the Hudson River appeared first on New York Times.
