An investigation is underway after yesterday's tragic helicopter crash in New York. The Associated Press reported that Agustin Escobar, an executive of Siemens, a German technology company, along with his wife and their three children aged 4, 5, and 11 years old, were among those killed.
The unidentified pilot of the aircraft was also killed.
Video appeared to show that this helicopter lost the back of its tail rotor and tumbled out of the sky.
The company that operated the helicopter, New York Helicopters, has been involved in incidents in the past, the New York Times reported.
The Times reported that a helicopter operated by New York Helicopters made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in 2013 after the chopper lost power. In 2015, another chopper crashed after the pilot reported the helicopter had spun out of control while hovering 20 feet off the ground.
Aviation expert Steve Cowell said that the company's history of maintenance would be among the issues investigators would look into.
"In-flight breakups of any aircraft of any type is extremely rare. And so it calls into question, you know, the type of maintenance that this helicopter had recently undergone," he said.
Cowell said commercial helicopters undergo periodic maintenance, and they're required to be visually inspected on a nearly daily basis.
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"The NTSB has a very extensive checklist of items and personnel that they'll go through. They'll go through every maintenance record, not just on this helicopter, but on their other helicopters. They'll go through the qualifications of everybody involved with the maintenance," Cowell said.
Part of the investigation will include the company's financial status, and whether it was able to afford routine maintenance.
One difference between this investigation and those involving commercial airliners is that the helicopter was not required to have a black box on board. But Cowell noted that there is video evidence of the crash, which will help investigators.
"It certainly complicates the investigation, but we have video, we have this video that we've looked at, and the NTSB is going to be seeking out other videos to help determine the cause, but it's not going to be that detrimental to the accident investigation in this circumstance," he said.
Based on the video evidence, Cowell believes there was little the pilot could have done to save the helicopter.
"Once you lose the tail rotor, you really lose any sort of directional control of the helicopter and any sort of balance as far as that's concerned," he said. "In addition, the main rotor departed from the aircraft as well. If you look closely at one of the videos, you'll see the main rotor leaving the body of the aircraft. So there was really nothing that could have been done."
