NTSB: Helicopter crash not engine failure

It wasn't engine failure. Nor was it a bird strike, like the one that led to the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009.

That's what investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday, a full day after a Bell 206B Jet Ranger helicopter, piloted by a Long Island man, plunged into the East River, killing one woman and injuring three others. Killed was Sonia Marra, who turned 40 this week, the daughter of two of the injured passengers.

"At this time, there's no obvious sign of catastrophic mechanical failure," Mark Rosekind, a member of the NTSB, said Wednesday.

Paul P. Dudley, 56, who has a home in Southampton, told crash investigators that his aircraft experienced an undisclosed problem shortly after takeoff, when it was about 15 feet above the heliport and while Dudley was in a 45-degree right turn, Rosekind said.

Dudley told the NTSB that he considered turning left after the helicopter experienced trouble, but gave up on that idea because it would have been a turn into a populated part of the city.

"The aircraft crashed into the water and then flipped upside down," Rosekind said.

NTSB investigators inspected the crash wreckage at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and found no signs that the engine caught fire.

Manhattan attorney Robert J. Hantman, who has represented Dudley and spoke with him after the crash, said Dudley told him that the helicopter had recently been inspected by a certified aircraft mechanic and it was cleared to fly.

Rosekind said the weight capacity of the aircraft is 3,200 pounds, and carries 76 gallons of fuel. Investigators will determine whether the aircraft was carrying too much weight. Dudley told investigators he carried 44 gallons of fuel when he left Linden Airport in New Jersey.

With investigators finding no evidence of engine failure, they'll turn their attention to two other areas -- the pilot and the weather -- Rosekind said.

"Weather is a concern," Rosekind said. "For example, the wind can actually affect the helicopter. "

Investigators will analyze Dudley's flight record as well as the possibility that human error may have caused the crash.

Vincent Driscoll, a professor of aviation at Vaughn College in Queens and a pilot who has flown the Bell 206B, said a tail wind can cause a phenomenon known as "settling with power" -- when rotors lose lift because of strong tail winds and can no longer steer the craft.

"You start to sink in your own rotor downwash," Driscoll said. "The more power pull to climb, the faster you descend."

The highest wind gusts recorded at LaGuardia Airport Tuesday were 15 mph out of the south, according to the National Weather Service.

Federal Aviation Administration records show that Dudley had a clean pilot's license, and the FAA had taken no enforcement actions against him, including after a 2006 emergency landing at Coney Island of his single-engine Cessna 172 after experiencing engine trouble.

Dudley's medical certificate was renewed by the FAA in June, records show. He had 2,200 hours of flight experience, 1,500 of which were in a helicopter. In the past five years, records show, Dudley logged 500 hours in the type of helicopter he flew Tuesday.

Wednesday, Dudley told 1010 WINS radio that when the helicopter hit the water he tried to rescue the other passengers as "cops jumped in the water . . . I yelled for help."

Although the crash involved a private helicopter, legislators called for a ban on commercial tourist flights at Manhattan's riverside heliports.

With Stacey Altherr,

William Murphy

and Emily Ngo