The helicopter pilot killed in a tragic crash while on a tour in New York City, which also killed a family of five onboard, was from the Chicago area, NBC 5 has learned.
The pilot was identified as 36-year-old Seankese Johnson, who grew up in Illinois.
The National Transportation and Safety Board said Johnson had a commercial pilot certificate and 788 hours of flight times in helicopters as of last month.
NBC Chicago spoke to friends of Johnson who said he “always had a passion toward aviation.”
“It was really cool for him to have that eureka moment of what he wanted to do, go forward and achieve that result,” said Cosme Rilos, a childhood friend of Johnson.
Johnson regularly celebrated his career milestones as a helicopter pilot on social media. In March, he changed his Facebook profile to a screengrab of him piloting a helicopter with a view of Freedom Tower and the Manhattan skyline in the background.
In the summer of 2023, he announced that he was flying a Blackhawk helicopter to fight fires for a Montana-based firm.
“Long hours and painstaking work to get to this moment. Thank you for all the love and support from those who’ve helped me get here,” Johnson wrote.
Here’s what we know so far about the crash:
How did it happen?
The doomed flight departed a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. Thursday and lasted less than 18 minutes. Radar data shows it flew north along the Manhattan skyline then south toward the Statue of Liberty.
Video of the crash show parts of the aircraft tumbling through the air near the Jersey City shoreline. The helicopter hit the river near a long maintenance pier for a ventilation shaft serving the Holland Tunnel.
Witnesses described hearing loud bangs and looking up to see the helicopter’s main rotor detach from the aircraft and spin away, while the cabin and the chopper’s severed tail boom plummeted into the river.
Rescue boats circled the submerged aircraft within minutes of impact. The pilot and passengers were removed from the water but could not be saved, officials said.
Who were the victims?
In addition to the pilot, the victims included Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, a global manager at Siemens Energy, and their three children.
The children were 4, 8 and 10 years old — and the 8-year-old’s birthday was Friday, Adams said.
Escobar was in the New York area on business and his family flew in to meet him for a few days, Steven Fulop, mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, wrote in a post on X. Photos on the helicopter company’s website show the couple and their children smiling just before taking off.
What may have caused the crash?
Officials haven’t yet given any cause for the crash.
The flight was operated by New York Helicopter, one of a handful of companies that offer tourists sightseeing flights over the city from helipads in Manhattan and the suburbs. No one answered the phones at the company’s offices in New York and New Jersey on Thursday or Friday.
A person who answered the phone at the home of the company’s owner, Michael Roth, said he declined to comment. Roth told the New York Post he was devastated and had “no clue” what happened.
“The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,” the Post quoted him as saying. He added that he had not seen anything like this during his 30 years in the helicopter business, but noted: “These are machines, and they break.”The company did not respond to NBC Chicago’s request for comment Friday.
Justin Green, an aviation lawyer and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, said videos of the crash suggest that a “catastrophic mechanical failure” left the pilot with no chance to save the aircraft. It is possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall, Green said.
The Federal Aviation Administration identified the helicopter as a Bell 206, a model widely used in commercial and government aviation, including by sightseeing companies, TV news stations and police. It was initially developed for the U.S. Army and thousands have been manufactured over the years.
FAA data shows the helicopter was built in 2004. It was a Bell 206 LongRanger IV, a slightly longer version of the original Bell 206 that can seat five passengers and two crew members.
According to FAA records, the helicopter had a maintenance issue last September involving its transmission assembly. An entry in the agency’s Service Difficulty Reporting System shows the transmission assembly had metal in oil, a sign of wear, and a bearing in the transmission was found to be flaking. The helicopter had logged 12,728 total flight hours at the time, according to the records.