Six people were killed when a sightseeing helicopter carrying a family from Spain tumbled out of the sky on Thursday and plunged into the Hudson River just off Jersey City, N.J., across from Manhattan.
Agustín Escobar, the chief executive for rail infrastructure for the technology company Siemens, his three children and his wife were pulled from the helicopter or the frigid river but none survived, a senior law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the crash. Another official confirmed that the Siemens executive and his family had been killed. The pilot was also killed.
The helicopter went down near a ventilation building above the Holland Tunnel, across the river from the West Village, at about 3:15 p.m.
Here is what else we know:
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Witness and video accounts: Video of the crash shows the helicopter tumbling and hitting the water at a high speed. A rotor flew off and the craft nose-dived into the water, sending debris flying toward the boat.
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The helicopter and its operator: The helicopter was a Bell 206 operated by New York Helicopter, which runs sightseeing tours for several hundred dollars a flight. The company’s chief executive said he did not know what had happened to the aircraft, which was leased from a company in Louisiana.
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The route: The helicopter appeared to have taken off from Downtown Manhattan Heliport. It circled near the Statue of Liberty, flew north to the George Washington Bridge, and was heading back south just off New Jersey’s shoreline when it crashed.
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The cause is unknown: The cause of the crash is under investigation, said New York City’s police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch. The Coast Guard said it was working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the National Transportation Safety Board to salvage the helicopter.
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Emergency response: Two passengers were alive when pulled from the water but later died, Ms. Tisch said.
The sightseeing helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday, killing six people, was a Bell 206L LongRanger, a common single-engine aircraft long used for law enforcement missions, medical lifts, newsgathering and aerial tourism.
The 206L has been in use for decades; its maker, Bell Textron, an aviation company based in Texas, took it out of production less than 10 years ago. With upkeep, the model is seen as safe and reliable, according to Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator who has flown one.
“It’s a tried and true aircraft,” Mr. Feith said, adding, “As long as the maintenance has been done, and done properly, it’s going to be a reliable aircraft.”
The helicopter is versatile and light, can carry up to six occupants, and flies at maximum speeds of about 115 miles per hour, Mr. Feith said.
Over the last 25 years, Bell 206 helicopters — a family of similar models that includes the Bell 206L — have been involved in 82 fatal accidents in the United States, according to National Transportation Safety Board records.
A spokeswoman for Bell, Lindsey Hughes, said in a statement, “Bell is following this tragedy as it develops, but we must direct any questions to the NTSB.”
The 206L has been particularly popular with helicopter sightseeing tour companies, according to Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot and an assistant professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University.
Mr. Pruchnicki said that he had greater concerns about the safety record of aerial sightseeing companies than the model of helicopter. “The helicopter tours do have a problematic record,” he said, “and they have had for a long time.”
Mr. Feith, the former N.T.S.B investigator, said he would want to know the number of flights the aircraft had flown on Thursday and whether it had recent maintenance work done.
“You want to see if there was evidence of fatigue, overstress” on the helicopter, Mr. Feith said. “There are a lot of elements to be explored.”
The firm that operated the helicopter that crashed in the Hudson River on Thursday, killing all six people aboard, has a long history of flying excursions around New York City, some of which have encountered safety problems.
In 2013, one of the helicopters operated by the company, New York Helicopter Charter, was carrying a family of four on a sightseeing tour when it suddenly lost power. It was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
