Posted on 04/12/2025 12:45:11 AM PDT by Angelino97
The New York City helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River had a mechanical issue months before it broke apart midair and killed all six onboard, including a family of tourists visiting from Spain, according to records.
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.
An investigation is underway to determine what caused the aircraft to drop out of the sky and plunge into the river. The probe will comb through the pilot’s experience, the still-incomplete wreckage, and the Big Apple company that runs the sightseeing tours.
Investigators will also review the maintenance work done on the doomed aircraft, including the completion of two recent safety airworthiness directives the FAA issued on Bell 206L model helicopters.
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 problem, if not fixed, could potentially cause the rotor blade to fail.
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.
The rotors on the doomed aircraft are still missing, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said Friday. NYPD divers are still on the hunt for several mangled pieces of the craft.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
As Paul Harvey used to say, “And NOW, we know the REST of the story”.
I don’t think we know anything yet. The investigation is just beginning and finding the root cause is a distant hope. The loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger took a high amount of time, investigation, and diligence. The initial cause was discovered fairly quickly. The progression to get to that root cause was harder. We don’t know anything yet.
how much did this ride cost?
the ferry to Staten Island is free
Sorry, but the root cause for the loss of the Challenger was known…
…BEFORE the Challenger launched that day.
Morton Thiokol engineers were literally screaming not to launch because of the low temperatures, but NASA management flat-out ignored them.
The great Richard Feynman was on the "Blue Ribbon Commission" investigation, and he was pissed when he realized he was being used, that the problem was known all along.
You missed the point. What drove NASA to launch in that weather? You aren’t there yet.
We never got straight answers about Flight 800
I’ve been on two helicopter rides in my lifetime. NYC and the Caribbean. I think the Empire State Building roof was a better experience in NYC. If you do a helicopter tour make it a beautiful location.not a city.
Interesting. Juan Browne has a decent video, suspecting a seizure in the transmission . Has pictures of the components to give one a better idea how they fit together.
Money, stress, schedule, human issues, funding, and prestige are all causes that interact with decisions made. I’m not saying all come into play at every event but there’s things that lead to failures. There’s an old black and white movie called “Fate Is The Hunter”. It starred Rod Taylor, Glenn Ford, Susan Pleshette, and others. It scratched the surface of what drives a string of events. Contributing factors generally push an endeavor to a failure. Mechanical failure maybe the cause. What behaviors let it get that bad? You have to know it all to figure out the why and how never to repeat the event.
there is something very appealing about white sand and turquoise water!
You can see it breaking apart in this wide angle video
New video captures the moment helicopter broke apart mid-air before crashing into the Hudson River, killing all six people on board
https://rumble.com/v6ry8vv-video-captures-the-moment-helicopter-broke-apart-mid-air-before-crashing-in.html
Driveshafts come in sections and there is a series of facing bolts on each end of the section. The drive shaft is going to be coming off of the main rotor transmission it’s then going to connect to something that may have two sections the length of the boom and then there’s going to be an intermediate gearbox where it’s going to go up the tail of the boom.
At the end of the main rotor transmission there’s a connection and at the beginning of the boom there may be a connection in the middle of the boom there may be a connection and at the intermediate gearbox where it goes up at the end of the boom there is a connection and then on the other end of the intermediate gearbox there is a straight drive shaft that will go to the tail rotor gearbox.
So on this particular model I don’t know how many sections they have for a tailroad or drive shaft but they would at least be one from the main rotor transmission one that runs the length of the Boom to the intermediate tailwater gear shaft gearbox rather and then a single shaft going from the top of the intermediate gearbox to the tailwater gearbox itself.
If the tail rotor drive shaft fails there’s still something to retain it. There’s a set of bearings that guide the long shaft in the middle.
My best guess is there’s a blade bump of some kind that caused one of the rotor blades to strike the boom.
It’s unlikely that the intermediate gearbox excuse me the main rotor transmission gearbox had a failure in the drive shaft, it’s something that would separate the main rotor transmission from the body of the aircraft and that would either be broken bolts or a blade strike that cause too much torque on the bolts.
I worked for k a m a n helicopters for 11 years on sh2 sea sprites.
Something else to consider, if there was a problem with the tail rotor drive shaft at the beginning of the failure then there would have been a loss of tail rotor RPM and that means the torque of the main rotor transmission would take over in the aircraft would start spinning in the air and it would stay in flight but it would start spinning in a circle like it’s rotating on the center of a dinner plate.
This aircraft went down hard and that tells me there was a blade strike on the boom and they then lost lift because the main rotor blades were probably out of sync and that may have separated the main rotor transmission from the body.
Much heavier maintenance than fixed-wing. It's a nice living.
I almost crashed in an Army helicopter back in 1975. I was in Army National Guard and we were at summer camp in Fla. There were 3 women in my unit and for some dumb reason, they put us women into a helicopter rather than letting us ride with the convoy to our bivouac site. The pilot was showing off for us gals and turning us every way he could. Well when he went to land and we were still about 75 to 100 ft in the air, he topped out a pine tree with the blades. Fortunately, he was able to land, but the copter was grounded with bent blades and he got into a little hot water for showing off. If we had been higher, it could have been really bad.
How about counterfeit parts?
Could that be an issue?
Yup. Losing a tail rotor wouldn’t cause this. Having the main xmsn lock up or mast bumping would. You’d think he would’ve had a chip light if it was the xmsn. Former OH-58 crew chief.
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