‘Chopper’ crash in NYC

[Mikey]

We’re in town for our granddaughter’s HS graduation. Eating lunch at Milo’s at 55th and 7th when this helicopter made a hard crash landing on top of the Equitable Tower (51st and 7th), starting a smoky fuel fire. Apparently this guy took off from the west side heliport heading to Linden, NJ but ran into some weather and ended up going in the opposite direction. Tried to put it down on top of a 54 story building where there’s no helipad. No helipads on top of any buildings here since the 70s, I think.

Nobody hurt except the pilot, who was killed. Amazingly they evacuated the entire building down the stairwells in half an hour with no injuries. Needless to say nobody knew at the time if it was a terrorist attack or what. They had 17 blocks closed to vehicles and pedestrians. I have to RACK both FDNY and NYPD for keeping things in hand.

We didn’t know about it until we left the restaurant. Somehow we were able to get an Uber back to our hotel in the East Village but he had to detour all the way over to the West Side to get around the shit.

Life in the big city, I guess.

[Mikey]

Not much left of the helicopter.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

...please be Rooster......please be Rooster...please be Rooster...

[FiatLux]

...please be Rooster......please be Rooster...please be Rooster...

A Raptors win... Or a rooster death?

[Rooster]

...please be Rooster......please be Rooster...please be Rooster...

:cry:
My thinking is he got into the soup and chose to try and get himself out of the situation but only made it worse. The logical thing to do would be to stay VFR and fly between the buildings. Yeah, he'd lose his license for a year or so, but he'd be alive. Instead, he chose to do what everyone is taught not to do and attempt to salvage a bad situation.

Obviously it cost him.

My understanding is that it was an AW109, a twin engines bird, so he should have had options other than an attempt to land on a roof with no heliport.

I won't say it couldn't happen to me because I've made similar choices in the past, but had the good fortune to wrangle a good outcome from a bad situation.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

damn it

[Left Seater]

This reminds me of the old luck vs experience buckets.

When you first get your wings you also get a bucket full of luck. Each time you fly, you take a bit of luck out of the bucket and put it in the experience bucket. You just hope you fill up your experience bucket before your luck bucket is empty.

Sucks that this guy is no longer with us, but at least he didn’t take anyone with him.