![]() ![]() Day dismissed their concerns and mocked the pilots as “snowflakes,” according to the NTSB, which provided transcripts of FlyNYON staff meetings among nearly 1,200 pages of evidence it released in September. to these harness issues in the months leading up to the crash. The investigators also note that FlyNYON pilots had alerted company CEO Patrick Day Jr. (The investigation did not find evidence that the passengers attempted to use the knives.) Moreover, the knives provided to passengers in case they needed to cut themselves free were “ineffective,” the NTSB found. The report says the carabiners (which are not approved by the FAA for aviation use) were attached to the back of the passengers’ harnesses, so they couldn’t be easily reached or unlocked by passengers suffering from cold shock and generally unaware of how the tethering mechanisms functioned. ![]() The board found that the fuel cutoff valve should be protected from inadvertent activation, and recommended a review of the design of the flotation system, as an “installation anomaly” prevented them from being able to fully inflate.īut the safety review focused on how the tethers that kept occupants from falling out of the helicopter also kept them from escaping when they were submerged in the 40-degree water of the East River. (I was a passenger on another FlyNYON flight that evening, and provided testimony to the investigation.) Beyond that, according to one NTSB member, the crash has implications for future airborne systems, like electric air taxis that will require the kind of oversight that the FAA appears not to be exhibiting with operators like FlyNYON. The subsequent investigation by the NTSB found a bounty of safety deficiencies, ranging from the aircraft’s setup to the operational strategies that made the disaster possible. ![]() "Tragically, the helicopter rolled inverted and the passenger cabin was submerged in extremely cold water in just 11 seconds, when the flotation was designed and certified to keep the helicopter upright, even in the event that one of its two reservoirs tanks did not activate for any reason." The company declined a subsequent request for comment on whether it had made any safety improvements of its own after the accident. After this article was published, FlyNYON provided a statement focusing on the fuel controls and flotation and suggesting the harness problem was "immaterial." The helicopter’s "emergency flotation system did not work as intended due to design problems with the pilot activation handle and the cross-feed tube," the statement says. (It did stop allowing dogs on board, though.) FlyNYON didn’t respond to a request for comment on the NTSB’s findings prior to publication. FlyNYON, which now uses its own helicopters rather than charters, still offers open-door flights. A Liberty Aircraft spokesperson declined comment, citing ongoing litigation, but said that the company no longer offers open-door flights. ![]() “These companies were knowingly exploiting a loophole to avoid stronger regulation and oversight, and people died because of it.”Īn FAA spokesperson said the agency would release its response to the recommendations within 90 days, as required by regulation. “These types of doors-off flights with dangerous supplemental restraints that could get tangled or caught on something and hamper escape ought to stop before others get hurt,” Robert Sumwalt, the NTSB chair, said at a public hearing on December 11. ![]()
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