NYC Pols Renew Call For Helicopter Ban Over Manhattan After Crash

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Proponents of regulating helicopter flight over New York City renewed their calls for a ban on "nonessential" flight over the city following Monday's deadly crash of a helicopter into the roof of a Midtown Manhattan high rise.

Congressmember Carolyn Maloney said "a lot" of the helicopter flight over the city is "totally not needed, it's unnecessary and it's very, very dangerous" during a press conference hours after Monday's crash.

"I truly and deeply believe that nonessential flights should be banned from New York City. It is just too densely populated, it is too dangerous and there is absolutely no safe place to land," Maloney said during a press conference at her Washington D.C. office. "If you have a problem, it's not safe to crash in the water, it's not safe to land in the streets or on the rooftops."

Maloney, who represents a number of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, said that advocates for greater flight regulation over New York have been calling on the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies to study air safety in the city "but they never get back to us."

Mayor Bill de Blasio also referenced the need to protect the "sanctity of our airspace" during an appearance Monday night on CNN, but did not directly call for a ban on helicopters.

"This one though begs the question about the sanctity of our airspace, not just in Manhattan, but all over this country, particularly in major urban areas, and we have to make sure the FAA has this under control," de Blasio said.

"So we’ve – we have to make sure the federal government does its job here and really makes sure that there are the safeguards in place that New Yorkers need and all Americans need to make sure something like this doesn't happen again."

A helicopter pilot was killed Monday after an attempted crash landing on the roof of the AXA Equitable Building at 787 Seventh Avenue between West 51st and 52nd streets, officials said. NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said Monday that the craft took off from the 34th Street heliport 11 minutes before the crash, it was run by a private operator and was thought to be involved in "executive travel." O'Neill said it's likely that the helicopter was headed to it's home base in Linden, NJ.

The police commissioner added that a temporary flight restriction had been in place because of bad weather and investigators are trying to figure out if the helicopter had permission to be in the air.

Following a March 2018 crash that killed five tourists, city officials moved to ban helicopter tours featuring "doors off" photography from using city heliports. The privately chartered aircraft was in the midst of a photo shoot when the pilot lost control and plunged into the East River.

A ban on helicopter flight over the city would require action from the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency announced Monday that the helicopter that crashed was not being handled by FAA air traffic control and that the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash and why the helicopter was flying over Midtown Manhattan.