Charter Company in Fatal Helicopter Crash Had Prior Mechanical Failures

The firm that operated the helicopter that crashed in the Hudson River on Thursday, killing all six people aboard, has a long history of flying excursions around New York City, some of which have not ended as planned.

The company, New York Helicopter Charter, had one of its aircraft crash while hovering 20 feet off the ground after takeoff in northern New Jersey in 2015. Two years earlier, another of its helicopters was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side of Manhattan after it lost power during a sightseeing tour for a family of four.

In the 2015 incident, the pilot reported that the helicopter started to spin out of control before he put it down for a “hard landing.” An investigation found that the aircraft had previously been involved in a hard landing in Chile in 2010 and that a drive shaft that was “unairworthy” appeared to be a replacement part that was unsuitable, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The helicopter involved in that crash was a Bell 206 model that New York Helicopter Charter was leasing from Meridian Helicopters, a Louisiana company. Meridian also owns the helicopter that plunged into the Hudson on Thursday, records show.

In the 2013 incident, a family of four tourists from Sweden was taking a sightseeing tour on a Sunday morning in a red Bell 206 that took off from a heliport near Wall Street. As the helicopter began to descend over the water, the pilot inflated pontoons that kept the aircraft upright in the water. The passengers went to a hospital but nobody was seriously injured.

Michael Roth, the chief executive of New York Helicopter Charter, has been operating sightseeing flights in and around the city for 30 years. Reached on Thursday after the fatal crash, Mr. Roth confirmed that the helicopter that went down had been leased by his company from its Louisiana-based owner.

He said that he could not explain what had happened on the flight. “I have no information whatsoever,” he said by phone from New Jersey. “I’m not there.”

He added that as a father and grandfather, he was “devastated” by the tragic outcome.

Court records suggest that New York Helicopter Charter was recently facing financial difficulties. One of its helicopters was repossessed in December after the company failed to pay the lease, according to a lawsuit filed in January in federal court in Manhattan by PHI Aviation, a Louisiana-based company that said it was owed $1.4 million. And New York Helicopter Charter filed for bankruptcy in 2019, saying that its business had been harmed by changes in New York City policies on air traffic around the city.

Operators like New York Helicopter Charter have been limited for several years by an agreement they made with city officials amid widespread complaints about noise from their frequent, low flights over the city. To avoid being banned from the city-owned heliport near Wall Street, the companies agreed to stick to prescribed routes and not to fly on Sundays.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Sheelagh McNeill and Susan C. Beachy contributed research. Christopher Maag contributed reporting.