NEW YORK (AP) — Federal officials released new images Wednesday showing a helicopter that crashed in New York last month breaking apart in midair.
The series of stills taken from surveillance camera video were included in the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report into the doomed sightseeing flight, on which six people died April 10.
The images show the moments the helicopter broke into three parts — the fuselage, the main rotor system and the tail boom.
“Several witnesses described hearing several loud ‘bangs’ emanating from the helicopter before it broke up and descended into the river,” the report says.
At the time of the crash, the Bell 206L-4 had operated about 50 hours since its last inspection Feb. 27, according to the report. The helicopter’s airframe accrued nearly 13,000 total hours of operation, and the engine accrued more than 23,000 hours.
Federal Aviation Administration records show the aircraft was built in 2004 and had a maintenance issue last September involving its transmission assembly.
The NTSB said previously that the aircraft, which was operated by tour company New York Helicopter, was not equipped with any video or data recording devices.
But on Wednesday it said photos taken beforehand show that the pilot, Seankese Johnson, was wearing computer-augmented sunglasses, which would have had video and audio recording capability. The glasses have not been recovered, however.
Johnson, a 36-year-old former Navy SEAL, received his commercial pilot’s license in 2023.
He logged 790 hours of flight time, fewer than 50 of which were in the make and model of the helicopter involved in the accident, the NTSB said.
“The pilot worked a 10 days on/10 days off schedule and the accident flight was his first day back after having 10 days off,” according to the report. “The accident flight was the eighth tour flight of the day for the accident helicopter, and all of those flights were operated by the pilot.”
The aircraft was on a typical tour, departing from the downtown heliport by Wall Street around 3 p.m. and flying north along the Manhattan skyline before heading south toward the Statue of Liberty.
Less than 18 minutes into the flight, witnesses saw the tail and main rotor breaking away and smoke pouring from the spinning helicopter.
In recent years New York Helicopter, the tour company, went through bankruptcy and faced ongoing lawsuits over alleged debts.
The company has said it is cooperating with authorities in the investigation. No one answered the phone at its office or responded to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
The crash was among a recent string of aircraft crashes and close calls that left some people worried about the safety of flying in the U.S. It also revived concerns about the popular and costly aerial tours over New York City.
Longtime opponents revived calls to ban or limit “nonessential” helicopter flights, including the roughly 30,000 sightseeing rides over the city each year. But Mayor Eric Adams does not support further restrictions.
Five commercial sightseeing helicopters have gone down in the rivers around Manhattan since 2005 as a result of mechanical failure, pilot error or collision, killing 20 people.
The other victims of the April 10 crash were Agustín Escobar, a 49-year-old global CEO of rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility; his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, a 39-year-old who worked for Siemens Energy, a separate company; and their children Victor, 4, Mercedes, 8, and Agustin, 10.
The family was from Barcelona, Spain, and Montal was the granddaughter of a former president of the famous Barcelona FC soccer club.
Officials have said Escobar was in the New York area on business, and his family flew in to meet him. Mercedes would have turned 9 the day after the crash.