NEW JERSEY – A tourist helicopter appeared to fall apart midair and plummeted into the Hudson River, killing a family of three children and two adults visiting New York City from Spain and the pilot.
Police and firefighters work on the site after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River on April 10, 2025 in Jersey City. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)
What happened?
Timeline:
According to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the aircraft, a Bell 206 flying for New York Helicopters, took off from a Lower Manhattan heliport at 2:59 p.m. It flew along the Manhattan shoreline before losing control near Pier A Park in Hoboken at approximately 3:08 p.m.
FDNY divers recovered two victims immediately, and two others were taken to local hospitals, where they sadly succumbed to their injuries.
MORE: Blades may have come off tourist helicopter during Hudson River crash
Names are being withheld pending family notification, but officials confirmed they were a family of five visiting from Spain.
As of 5:15 p.m., rescue efforts appeared to have concluded, and officials were focused on recovering parts of the helicopter from the water.
Video shows helicopter falling into the Hudson River
Dig deeper:
Witness Bruce Wall said he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.
Video shows helicopter crash into Hudson River
A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon. Video captured by Bruce Hall shows the helicopter coming apart in mid-air with the main cabin plummeting into the water just off the pier.
Videos also showed the helicopter submerged, upside-down in the water.
‘What could have caused the helicopter to crash?’
What they’re saying:
The only evidence at this point in the investigation is eyewitness accounts and bystander video, both of which suggest that the helicopter’s rotor blades – and maybe even the entire assembly – separated mid-flight, with catastrophic consequences.
A crashed helicopter is seen floating in front of an NYPD boat on the Hudson River on April 10, 2025 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Kyle Bailey, an aviation analyst, said it was “likely” that the separating rotor blades may have sliced off the aircraft’s tail boom. Such a scenario would have been unrecoverable, expert JP Tristani explained.
“If that articulating head actually separated from the aircraft, the aircraft was doomed. There’s no possibility of that aircraft ever having made a normal type of landing. It was going to crash,” Tristani said.
Police and firefighters work on the site after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River on April 10, 2025 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)
He continued, “In this particular case though, when you throw a blade, one blade or the entire head, no, you’re just a falling brick. You don’t have a chance in hell.”
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The backstory:
The skies over Manhattan are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, both private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights. Manhattan has several helipads that whisk business executives and others to destinations throughout the metropolitan area.
A helicopter is pulled from the East River on March 12, 2018 in New York City. Five people died after the helicopter made an emergency landing and flipped upside down on Sunday night, trapping the passengers inside. (Photo by James Devaney/Getty Imag
Over the years, several crashes have occurred, including a 2009 midair collision between a plane and a sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River that killed nine people, and a 2018 charter helicopter crash during an “open door” flight over the East River that left five dead.
