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East River Helicopter Crash Kills 5 in New York; Pilot Survives
Five people were killed after a helicopter crashed into the East River off Manhattan on Sunday night, leaving only the pilot alive, the authorities said. The red helicopter was flying along a popular route for sightseers who want to view the Manhattan skyline. But witnesses said it was flying too fast and descending too quickly. From high-rise apartment buildings and parks along the river, they watched as the helicopter, losing altitude as if it were landing on solid ground, plunged into the… (www.nytimes.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
The pilot must be absolutely devastated. The emergency flotation system appears fully inflated before they hit the water.
cal..of course the pilot is devastated and also probably in a stunned condition..such a tragedy..the flotation devices this helicopter is equipped with did not inflate..the ones you seen in later photos were used to get the chopper out of the water where it had sunk and floated down the river..the videos taken by observers have been shown a multitude of times,and even to a novice,not an faa investigator,the aircraft descended very quickly as if it were landing on a flat surface,and then it tipped over rapidly with rotors spinning...may those passengers rest in peace...
Just to clear up some misinformation. Those yellow bags are the emergency pop-outs and they were inflated at touchdown. Auto-rotations are very rapid descents as seen by the witnesses that are cushioned at the bottom by using the energy stored in the windmilling rotor. The pilot did a good job and this should have been survivable by all. The reason for the power loss and rollover will need to be determined by the experts. I'm sure not many here have landed a helicopter on the water with pop-outs but I'm pretty sure that keeping the rotor out of the water after touchdown is paramount and at the same time difficult to do.
Mary Susan, it was autorotating as evidenced by the coning of the main rotors (vs. a flat rotor disk in normal flight) seen in the video. It requires a fairly rapid decent to keep enough air volume moving through the rotor disk to keep the main rotors turning fast enough to maintain sufficient energy so that the when the pilot initiates the flare there is enough there to slow the rate of decent prior to touchdown.
Where'd you get that info. from? The video shows the floats prior to touchdown...
Looks like an autorotation to me!