A fam­i­ly from Spain was about to cel­e­brate the ninth birth­day of one of their chil­dren when their sight­see­ing he­li­copter broke apart in midair and crashed in­to the Hud­son Riv­er be­tween New York City and New Jer­sey, killing all six peo­ple aboard in the lat­est U.S. avi­a­tion dis­as­ter, of­fi­cials said Fri­day.

Au­thor­i­ties in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board are in­ves­ti­gat­ing Thurs­day’s mid-af­ter­noon crash. There has been no word of a cause. The NTSB plans to brief re­porters Fri­day.

The vic­tims in­clud­ed Siemens ex­ec­u­tive Agustin Es­co­bar, his wife, Mer­cè Cam­prubí Mon­tal, a glob­al man­ag­er at an en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, and three chil­dren, in ad­di­tion to the pi­lot, a per­son briefed on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The per­son could not dis­cuss de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. The pi­lot al­so died.

New York City May­or Er­ic Adams said the chil­dren were 4, 8 and 10 years old, and the 8-year-old’s birth­day was Fri­day.

“So this is prob­a­bly part of the nor­mal tourist at­trac­tion of see­ing the city from the sky­line,” Adams told Fox 5 New York. “But it’s just a re­al un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion. And our heart goes out to the fam­i­ly mem­bers.”

Es­co­bar was in the New York area on busi­ness and his fam­i­ly flew over to meet him for a few days, said Steven Fu­lop, may­or of Jer­sey City, New Jer­sey, in a post on X. He said a rel­a­tive was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive Fri­day and of­fi­cials were work­ing with the med­ical ex­am­in­er to re­lease the bod­ies to be tak­en back to Spain.

Pieces of the air­craft could be seen float­ing in the riv­er Fri­day morn­ing as divers re­sumed the search for ev­i­dence of the cause.

Pho­tos on the he­li­copter com­pa­ny’s web­site show the cou­ple and their chil­dren smil­ing as they board­ed just be­fore tak­ing off.

The flight de­part­ed a down­town he­li­port around 3 p.m. 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 showed parts of the air­craft tum­bling through the air in­to the wa­ter near the shore­line of Jer­sey City, New Jer­sey.

Wit­ness­es de­scribe the he­li­copter’s plunge in­to the Hud­son

Bruce Wall, in Jer­sey City, said he saw the he­li­copter “falling apart” midair. The tail and the main ro­tor broke away, and the ro­tor con­tin­ued to spin as it de­scend­ed to the wa­ter.

Dani Hor­biak was in her Jer­sey City home when she heard what sound­ed like “sev­er­al gun­shots in a row.” She looked out her win­dow and saw the chop­per “splash in sev­er­al pieces in­to the riv­er.”

The he­li­copter was spin­ning un­con­trol­lably with “a bunch of smoke com­ing out” be­fore it slammed in­to the wa­ter, said Lesly Ca­ma­cho, a host­ess at a restau­rant along the riv­er in Hobo­ken, New Jer­sey.

Res­cue boats cir­cled the sub­merged air­craft with­in min­utes of im­pact near the end of a long main­te­nance pier for a ven­ti­la­tion tow­er serv­ing the Hol­land Tun­nel. Re­cov­ery crews hoist­ed the man­gled he­li­copter out of the wa­ter just af­ter 8 p.m. us­ing a float­ing crane.

The bod­ies were al­so re­cov­ered from the riv­er, Adams said.

The flight was op­er­at­ed by New York He­li­copter. 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 such a thing hap­pen dur­ing his 30 years in the he­li­copter busi­ness, but not­ed: “These are ma­chines, and they break.”

Emails seek­ing com­ment were sent to at­tor­neys who have rep­re­sent­ed Roth in the past.

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.

What may have caused the crash?

Videos of the crash sug­gest 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.

“No pi­lot could have pre­vent­ed that ac­ci­dent once they lost the lifts,” Green said. “It’s like a rock falling to the ground. It’s heart­break­ing.”

The skies over Man­hat­tan are rou­tine­ly filled with planes and he­li­copters, both pri­vate recre­ation­al air­craft and com­mer­cial and tourist flights. Man­hat­tan has sev­er­al he­li­pads from which busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives and oth­ers are whisked to des­ti­na­tions through­out the met­ro­pol­i­tan area.

At least 38 peo­ple have died in he­li­copter ac­ci­dents in New York City since 1977. A col­li­sion be­tween a plane and a tourist he­li­copter over the Hud­son in 2009 killed nine peo­ple, and five died in 2018 when a char­ter he­li­copter of­fer­ing “open door” flights went down in­to the East Riv­er.

New York He­li­copter al­so owned a Bell 206 that lost pow­er and made an emer­gency land­ing on the Hud­son dur­ing a sight­see­ing tour in June 2013. The pi­lot man­aged to land safe­ly and he and the pas­sen­gers — a fam­i­ly of four Swedes — were un­in­jured. The Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board found that a main­te­nance flub and an en­gine lu­bri­ca­tion anom­aly led to the pow­er cut­off.

Thurs­day’s crash was the first for a he­li­copter in the city since one hit the roof of a sky­scraper in 2019, killing the pi­lot.

The ac­ci­dents and the noise caused by he­li­copters have re­peat­ed­ly led some com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists and of­fi­cials to pro­pose ban­ning or re­strict­ing traf­fic at Man­hat­tan he­li­ports.

In an in­ter­view with AP, New York state Sen. Brad Hoyl­man-Si­gal, who rep­re­sents a dis­trict on the west side of Man­hat­tan along the Hud­son Riv­er, said the crash was a “re­minder of our worst fears of tourist he­li­copters” in the city and called for non-es­sen­tial flights over the city to be banned.

“Hav­ing non-es­sen­tial flights over dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas is a recipe for dis­as­ter,” he said.

Oth­er re­cent crash­es and close calls have led to wor­ries about the safe­ty of fly­ing in the U.S. Sev­en peo­ple were killed when a med­ical trans­port plane plum­met­ed in­to a Philadel­phia neigh­bour­hood in Jan­u­ary. That hap­pened two days af­ter an Amer­i­can Air­lines jet and an Army he­li­copter col­lid­ed in midair in Wash­ing­ton in the dead­liest U.S. air dis­as­ter in a gen­er­a­tion.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mike Bal­samo and Philip Marce­lo in New York; Hal­lie Gold­en in Seat­tle; Joseph Wil­son in Barcelona, Spain; and Dave Collins in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut; con­tributed to this re­port.

NEW YORK (AP) —