Brother of New York helicopter victim: ‘They left together, with a smile on their faces’

“They left together, without suffering, with a smile on their faces.”

These were the words of Joan Camprubí, brother of Mercè Camprubí, who died in Thursday’s helicopter crash in New York City, along with her husband, Agustín Escobar, and their three children, aged 11, 5, and 4.

The Camprubí family has traveled to New York to carry out the necessary formalities to repatriate the bodies “as soon as possible” for the family to “rest in peace together.”

Joan Camprubí was accompanied to the site of the crash by New York Mayor Eric Adams, where he laid flowers in memory of his sister and family. From Pier 40, he told the press that his family was “trying to assimilate the “really difficult situation”.

Camprubí also expressed gratitude for the “massive” outpouring of support from American, Spanish, and Catalan institutions alike, as well as the company Siemens, where both Mercè Camprubí and Agustín Escobar were working.

“You will always be with us and in our hearts. We will never forget you, and we will carry your smiles with us every day of our lives,” Camprubí said in Catalan.

No flight recorders

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced in a statement that the "helicopter was not equipped with any flight recorders. No onboard video recorders or camera recorders have been recovered and none of the helicopter avionics onboard recorded information that could be used for the investigation."

Authorities continued to recover wreckage of the Bell-206 L-4 helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River. Divers, the statement reads, "are continuing to search for the helicopter's main rotor, main gear box, tail rotor, and a large portion of the tail boom."

Experts said that the last major inspection was on March 1, and that before the crash the helicopter had completed seven tour flights. The accident happened during the eighth flight of the day, NTSB adds.

Financial issues

The US newspaper 'The New York Times' reports that the pilot had been a member of the US Navy, before obtaining the license to pilot helicopters in 2023.

In another article, they say that in 2013 another helicopter from the same company had already lost energy and was forced to do an emergency landing on the Hudson River.

Another accident was reported in 2015, and in 2019, as The New York Times says, the company filed to bankruptcy.