9 Dead After Copter and Plane Collide

A small private plane carrying three people and a New York tourist helicopter with six collided in midair and plunged into the Hudson River off Hoboken, N.J., opposite Manhattan’s West Side, just before noon on Saturday. All on board the two aircraft were killed, the authorities said.

The cause of the accident was under investigation. But what perhaps thousands of people out on a crystalline summer day saw from both sides of the Hudson was a stunning, low-altitude accident in which the plane rolled up and into the helicopter, striking with a crack like thunder as the helicopter’s blades and one of the plane’s wings flew off, and then both aircraft fell and vanished into the river.

As witnesses watched from parks and balconies, three bodies were recovered, one floating in the water and two others from wreckage believed to be that of the helicopter, located by divers on the murky riverbed 30 feet down. The search for the plane was impeded by visibility of only two or three feet at the bottom.

But officials held out no hope for survivors. “This is not going to have a happy ending,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference, contrasting the outcome with the spectacular landing of a jetliner in the icy Hudson on Jan. 15, when all 155 on board were rescued by ferries and emergency boats.

From all appearances, the mayor said in somber tones, the crash was “not survivable.” He said divers searching for the remaining victims, and then trying to recover the submerged aircraft, would proceed with caution to avoid further loss of life. “This has changed from a rescue to a recovery mission,” he said.

The victims included five Italian tourists and a pilot aboard the helicopter, which had just taken off from the West 30th Street heliport in Manhattan. Aviation authorities identified the pilot and owner of the plane as Steven M. Altman, of Ambler, Pa., and said he carried two passengers; a law enforcement official identified them as Mr. Altman’s brother Daniel Altman and Daniel’s son Brett.

Reached at home, the pilot’s wife, Pamala, said her husband was licensed and had been scheduled to fly his plane on Saturday from Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey to Ocean City, on the Jersey Shore.

The Italian tourists — a woman, two men and two children — were traveling together in a group of about a dozen relatives and friends. People familiar with their plans said they lived in the Bologna area. Others in the group were taken to a Red Cross center on West 49th Street, where they received counseling.

It was the worst air accident in the New York City area since Nov. 12, 2001, when 265 people were killed in the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Belle Harbor, Queens, as it took off from Kennedy International Airport for the Dominican Republic. It was the first fatal crash since Oct. 11, 2006, when a small plane flying over the East River hit a 42-story building on Manhattan’s East Side, killing the Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor.

Saturday’s crash raised questions about the scores of virtually unregulated low-altitude flights every day in a busy corridor over the Hudson. Helicopters and small planes may fly over the river under a 1,100-foot ceiling, well below a 5,000-foot minimum altitude in airspace reserved for airliners. Mayor Bloomberg, asked about federal rules for the corridor, said he did not favor changes in the rules, citing the city’s interests in tourism.

As investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board began an inquiry that was expected to take weeks or months, the convergence of the doomed aircraft seemed wildly improbable in retrospect. Federal Aviation Administration officials, citing radar tracks, said the airplane took off from Teterboro at 11:50 a.m., after stopping there for a half-hour and picking up a passenger. The plane arrived over the Hudson at 11:52 and turned south.

The helicopter, a European-made craft owned by a Liberty Helicopters, took off from West 30th Street at almost the same time for a sightseeing tour. The helicopter took off, headed out over the river, turned south and climbed to between 500 and 1,000 feet.

On a sun-drenched Saturday that beckoned many out of doors, there were countless witnesses to the dramatic denouement — joggers, bikers, strollers, people lunching in restaurants and lounging in high-rise apartments lining the Hudson — but many got only glimpses of what happened, looking out over the milewide river when they heard what sounded like distant thunder in a mostly clear sky.

Many said the small airplane, a white-and-red, single-engine Piper PA-32R, came up behind and under the helicopter. A Liberty pilot watching from the heliport radioed to warn the copter, said Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairwoman of the safety board.

“You have a fixed wing behind you,” he said. But he got no response.

The plane suddenly went into a left-turning roll, banking steeply, as if its pilot was unaware of impending danger, and at 11:56 a.m. rammed the rear underside of the copter not far off the Hoboken shoreline. The altitude was estimated at 500 to 1,200 feet.

The aircraft appeared to break apart in midair — the plane’s left wing tumbling, the detached rotor blades of the helicopter spinning away like a child’s toy, witnesses said. The fuselages parted in a puff of dark smoke and fell away into the choppy blue-gray Hudson. It took only seconds, and the two craft were gone in the eerie silence that followed.

Colin Rich, 26, of Brooklyn, saw the crash from a river park in Manhattan: “Both appeared to be heading south, and the plane rolled into the side of the helicopter. Right before that, it appeared very suspect because I saw them getting so close to each other.”

Yvonne Morrow and Henry Strouss, both 70, were giving a tour for Friends of Hudson River Park to a score of people. “We heard this pop and the small plane and the helicopter were breaking up into pieces, and they were falling into the river very fast,” Ms. Morrow said. “It took only about three seconds for everything to disappear out of the sky.”

A passing Circle Line boat quickly diverted to the scene, followed by water taxis and other river craft, and within minutes police and fire boats and Coast Guard teams were headed for the crash site, but it was too late for rescues.

Air traffic controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport said the airplane had disappeared from its radar screens. Almost at the same time, two pilots in planes near the scene called in reports of an aircraft apparently in distress over the water, on the river’s western edge between the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Moments later, the New York Police Department began receiving a flood of 911 calls, reporting that the plane and the helicopter had collided and gone down.

The search for bodies and the wreckage was suspended as night fell, although police boats remained in the water, the remnants of what had been a flotilla from local police and fire departments and the Coast Guard, a coordinated effort that drew praise from public officials on both sides of the Hudson. The search was to resume on Sunday.

Liberty Helicopters, which runs sightseeing excursions over the Hudson and New York Harbor, taking in the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Manhattan, charges $130 for individual trips and up to $1,000 for charters.

Its record is not unblemished. In July 1997, a Liberty helicopter went down in the Hudson between Midtown Manhattan and Weehawken, N.J., but landed on inflated emergency pontoons. Eight people on board — seven tourists and the pilot — were rescued, uninjured. In 1997, a rotor on one of Liberty’s sightseeing helicopters clipped a Manhattan building, forcing an emergency landing, but no one was hurt.

In a statement, Liberty offered condolences to victims’ families and said it would cooperate with investigators.

For many who witnessed the crash, the images were hard to shake off. Leah Kelley, 22, who was at Chelsea Piers, saw the plane corkscrewing into the river. “It hit the water head-on — a big wave came up, and the plane was completely submerged,” she said. “I spent a good long time freaking out and crying.”