Near New York’s Holland Tunnel: Helicopter Loses Control Before Fatal Crash : we want to warn our viewers we are getting some video of the moment of impact. This is disturbing video we do want to show you as we do know this investigation is looking at that… that would suggest to me they had lost all aerodynamic, forward momentum. That is just astonishing.
Very often in helicopter crashes, they try to auto rotate down. In other words, they try to use the blades as almost a feathering device that allows them to land safely.
That is completely out of control. That is going down like a rock. I don’t see any… and look at that. It looks as if maybe as you play it, are the blades moving or not? It almost looked like the blades… it’s hard to tell. It’s hard to tell. I’m not sure those blades are moving.
That kind of evidence is what investigators will be looking for to give them any clue at all into what happened. And keep in mind they don’t want to just solve this particular crash mystery. They also want to, if they can learn lessons.
In other words, I don’t know what kind of a chopper this is, but is there some sort of a problem with that chopper that they need to immediately identify and spread the word to chopper operators around the world to be looking for this problem. We simply don’t know, but that kind of photographic and video evidence is really powerful.
And Tom, apparently the eyewitness said that the blades had actually come off of this helicopter before that moment. I’m not a helicopter…
I’m not a pilot at all. I’ve just spent a lot of time covering crashes. I will tell you that again to underscore – very often initial reports and eyewitness reports can be wrong, but it would almost seem that that eyewitness report is consistent with that video because I don’t see those blades turning and I see no forward momentum. It seems like that just fell like a rock.
Clearly the NTSB is going to be looking at that as well. This was very close, by the way, I should have mentioned very close to the Holland Tunnel there in New York. And if you are out…
if you don’t live in New York, if you don’t go to New York very often, if you look at a map of New York City, north… you know, north is up to the…
in the top, the East Side river is on the right, the Hudson River is on the left. And New Jersey is on the other side of the Hudson River, so this is very close to the Holland Tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York, and there is an awful lot of helicopter traffic, as you know, up and down the Hudson and up and down the East River.
Source: raialkhalij + aljazeera