Mystery surrounds helicopter crash
Print Edition
A HELICOPTER has crashed onto the fog-shrouded roof of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, killing the pilot and unnerving a city still scarred by memories of the September 11, 2001, airplane attacks on the World Trade Center.
The crash on a rainy, gray day atop the 54-floor AXA Equitable Center forced office workers to evacuate in one of the city’s busiest areas a few blocks north of Times Square.
The pilot was the only person aboard the chopper when it plunged into the building and burst into flames, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. No injuries, either to people in the building or on the ground, have been reported.
“The helicopter is pretty obliterated, it was obviously a very hard hit,” de Blasio said, adding nothing indicated “an act of terrorism.”
A key mystery in the crash is why the Agusta A109E was flying at all in a rainstorm in tightly controlled airspace above midtown Manhattan.
To enter that vicinity, de Blasio said, the pilot would have needed approval from the air traffic control tower at LaGuardia Airport across the East River in Queens, “and we need to find out if that happened.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement “FAA air traffic controllers did not handle” the helicopter’s flight, but a spokeswoman for the agency declined to say whether the aircraft was observing prevailing flight restrictions.
The pilot was identified as Tim McCormack, who was going to land at Linden Airport in New Jersey, said Paul Dudley, the airport’s director.
“Tim McCormack was a well-respected, highly trained veteran pilot who also had tremendous local knowledge, having flown in this area for many years,” Dudley said.
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