All red alerts ignored? Doomed NYC chopper that killed Agustin Escobar reported mechanical issue

The Hudson River helicopter tragedy points to the mismanagement of the private company New York Helicopter Tour as reports have now revealed that the helicopter reported a mechanical issue months before. Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife and three children were killed when the helicopter broke midair and nosedived into the murky water of the Hudson river minutes after flying.

The ill-fated Bell206L-4 LongRanger IV aircraft, owned and operated by New York Helicopter, experienced a mechanical issue with its transmission assembly last September, according to Federal Aviation Administration data. Records show the doomed chopper was built in 2004 and had already logged 12,728 hours of flight time when it was forced into repair.

The Big Apple company has come on the radar after this recent tragedy, as this is not the first one involving the company. The pilot's experience and the wreckage of the helicopter are also under scrutiny. Investigators will also review the maintenance work that was done on the doomed aircraft, including the completion of two recent safety airworthiness directives the FAA issued on Bell 206L model helicopters.

What directives did the FAA issue for the model?

The federal agency issued the first directive in December 2022 and called for the inspection and possible replacement of the models’ main rotor blades due to “delamination” — an issue with the internal layers of the blade separating due to material fatigue, damage or other defects, the New York Post reported.

A second directive, issued in May 2023, required the testing and possible replacement of tail rotor shafts on eight models, including the one involved in Thursday’s deadly wreck, according to the FAA, which issued the alert after a chopper lost a tail-rotor drive due to a joint failure.

What did New York Helicopter Tour CEO say?

In 2013, a Bell 206 chopper carrying four Swedish tourists crash-landed in the Hudson, though the pilot and the other passengers miraculously survived. At that time the company CEO Michael Roth said he had no clue what happened. After Thursday's tragedy again, Roth said he did not know what happened. “The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter. And I haven’t seen anything like that in my 30 years being in business, in the helicopter business,” he said.