Beaming at the camera and sitting proudly in the cockpit of a helicopter on the eve of her ninth birthday, a little girl excitedly waited to take off and embark on a tour over the iconic New York City skyline with her parents and young siblings on Thursday.
But just 16 minutes later, tragedy struck when the eight-year-old, who had travelled to the Big Apple from Spain with her family, was killed in a horror crash after the chopper plummeted into the Hudson River at 3.15pm yesterday.
Her siblings, aged ten and four, also died in the horror crash, as well as her father Agustin Escobar, a Siemens executive, and mother Merce Camprubi Montal.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed the children’s ages and said in a statement that the devastating crash ‘was a real unfortunate situation. And our heart goes out to the family members’.
The family were on vacation in New York to celebrate her ninth birthday, which would have been today.
The family-of-five had just arrived from Barcelona and embarked on their first day touring the Big Apple, taking a scenic trip in the helicopter as a treat for the young girl and her mother Merce, who officials said was also celebrating her birthday.
Commenting on the tragedy, Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop said: ‘The family flew out to extend the trip a couple days in NYC. They were celebrating the mom’s 40th birthday with the tourist helicopter flight yesterday.’
It was unclear whether Fulop was referring to the holiday overall being a birthday trip for Merce or if the little girl’s mother was also celebrating her birthday on the fateful day.
The tragic twist emerged as terrifying new footage appears to show the cause of the tragedy.
A rotor blade can be seen plummeting into the water, with aviation experts saying that this likely occurred because the main rotor blades separated from the aircraft and sliced the tail.
‘From the footage, it appears that the main rotor struck the body of the helicopter, cutting off the tail of the helicopter, which created an unrecoverable event,’ former military aviator and attorney Jim Brauchle of Motley Rice LLC told DailyMail.com.
‘The two main causes of this phenomenon are mechanical failure or excessive maneuvering. Still, a full investigation is needed to understand why this tragedy occurred.
‘Having previously represented the families of tourists killed during a helicopter tour over the Hudson River, my heart goes out to the families at this catastrophic time.’
Another expert told Fox 5 that in the case that the separating rotor blades sliced off the aircraft’s tail boom, the flight would have been unrecoverable.
‘If that articulating head actually separated from the aircraft, the aircraft was doomed. There’s no possibility of that aircraft ever having made a normal type of landing. It was going to crash,’ said Tristani.
‘In this particular case though, when you throw a blade, one blade or the entire head, no, you’re just a falling brick.’
Michael Roth, 71, who owns New York Helicopter which provided the tour and the chopper, said the aircraft was running out of fuel before it crashed.
‘He [the pilot] called in that he was landing and that he needed fuel, and it should have taken him about three minutes to arrive, but 20 minutes later, he didn’t arrive,’ Roth told The Telegraph.
Roth said he was devastated by the crash and agreed with other experts that the video appears to show the main rotor blades had broken off.
‘The only thing I know by watching a video of the helicopter falling down, that the main rotor blades weren’t on the helicopter,’ he told the New York Post.
‘And I haven’t seen anything like that in my 30 years being in business, in the helicopter business. The only thing I could guess – I got no clue – is that it either had a bird strike or the main rotor blades failed. I have no clue. I don’t know.’
A ‘catastrophic mechanical failure’ left the pilot with no chance to save the helicopter, said Justin Green, an aviation lawyer who was a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps.
It is possible the helicopter’s main rotors struck the tail boom, breaking it apart and causing the cabin to free fall, Green said.
‘They were dead as soon as whatever happened happened,’ Green said. ‘There’s no indication they had any control over the craft. No pilot could have prevented that accident once they lost the lifts. It’s like a rock falling to the ground. It’s heartbreaking.’
It comes as it was revealed that the helicopter’s unidentified pilot, 36, radioed base to warn that they were running out of fuel just before the tragedy struck. He was also killed in the crash.
