The New York helicopter has placed the sky around New York monuments for decades. But the company had some difficulties before one of its tourist chopperfell in the Hudson riverThis week,Kill the six peopleon board.
There was aCall close in 2013When another helicopter suddenly lost power in the air and the pilot maneuvered him with a safe landing on pontoons in the Hudson.
And in the past eight years, the company has been bankrupt and faces current prosecution on alleged debts.
In January, it was prosecuted for more than $ 1.4 million by a company which she had stopped paying a lease for a helicopter.
A cash lenderprosecuted in FebruaryAffirming that the company had blocked reimbursements on a loan of weeks and owed more than $ 83,000. The New York helicopter has not yet replied in both cases.
The phones sounded unanswered in the company’s offices on Friday. A message asking for comments was left to the owner Michael Roth, where someone who answered the phone on Thursday evening told the Associated Press that Roth did not comment. He hadsaid to the New York PostHe was disconcerted and devastated by the accident.
“It’s horrible,” said the newspaper said Roth. “But you have to remember something: they are machines, and they break.”
Founded in the 1990s, Roth’s Business, which was also known by names such as New York Helicopter Charter Inc. and New York Helicopter Tours LLC, offers tourists a view as the crow flies from the Statue of Liberty, Central Park and the Horizon of Manhattan. One of the few companies with a license allowing it to fly near the main New York monuments, it also offers shuttles to airports and charter flights for executives and others.
The airspace around Manhattan is occupied, delicate and sometimes fatal.More than three dozen people have perishedOn tour and other helicopter accidents in New York during the last half century. A few weeks ago, a$ 90 million regulationsended an unjustified death trial filed by relatives of one of the five passengers killed in a tourist helicopter accident in 2018 operated by another company.
Mayor Eric Adams noted during television interviews on Friday that tens of thousands of flights per year operate safely from the Heliport of Lower Manhattan where Thursday’s tour has taken off. When he was asked if he had specific concerns about the New York helicopter, he only said that the investigators were examining what had happened.
The Democrat mayor said Fox 5 / WNYW-TV he would not try to stop such flights: “Plane trips are crucial for this city.”
The New York Helicopter website claims a “advanced security file”, but it did not go entirely without dings. THEThe National Transportation Safety Board awarded the failure of the 2013 power ofPartly to an “inappropriate maintenance decision” concerning an oil pressure problem.
Two years later, a New York helicopterCraft went to a tourWhile hovering with a heliport, landing hard but safe with the pilot on board. This time, the NTSB blamed an unknown person who had painted by a bad part – marked as such – on a helicopter that the New York helicopter had recently rented to someone who had just bought it. The new owner said that the room arrived with fresh painting.
New York helicopter has achieved financial problems after New York CityHelicopter traffic in two in 2017According to the documents deposited in the 2019 bankruptcy of the company.
While thefts were reduced, but Manhattan’s landing fees increased, the company saw the revenues go from $ 4.5 million in 2017 to $ 3.9 million in 2018, according to its bankruptcy documents. The New York helicopter said that he had reduced his staff to 30 employees to 13.
In 2019, he scored $ 6 million in assets and $ 1.6 million in liabilities, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts for landing and repair bills.
The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2022 but has apparently continued to face financial opposite winds.
Last June, the companyhas filed a legal actionOn what he called the “inadmissible” terms of a 2018 loan, he obtained from another cash lender. The helicopter company abandoned the case this month. It is not clear to judicial files if there was a financial or other regulation.
Messages were sent to lawyers who represented the company.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
