A 36-year-old former Navy SEAL technician has been identified as the pilot of a New York Helicopters Bell LongRanger that crashed in the Hudson River off Jersey City last Thursday. Seankese Johnson worked in security after leaving the Seals until he could save enough money to fulfill his dream of flying for a living. “There were a lot of obstacles in front of him, but he climbed that mountain," Remi Adeleke, a former SEAL who became friends with Johnson in the service, told NewsNation. "Not only did he climb that mountain, he died having achieved that goal. He died doing what he loved.” Also killed were Siemens executive Augustin Escobar, his wife Mercè Camprubí Montal and their three children ages four to ten. The flight was part of a birthday celebration for one of the kids.
Dying in a helicopter wreck, especially after the flying aparatus has disassembled itself and converted back to the laws of gravity, may not be quite as loveable, as it is made out to be.
It may only be a few seconds of horror and fairly pain free, which gives some peace of mind.
From own close- calls my assumption has always been, that the pilot of a crashing ship is too busy to realize whats going on.
Hasn’t Chuck Schumer already shown highest levels of politically driven subject matter incompetence by making incredibly dumb-assed comments about this crash and helicopter tours in general? Or does he sport the wrong letter behind his name, to be considered?
I love flying, but I don’t want to die doing it. If I ever do have a fatal accident I hope people don’t say this about me. You can say I died hoping others will learn from my mistakes, but I don’t want something I love to be the death of me.
Agree. Post by SteveR is unhelpful in understanding this accident, very disrespectful of pilot & pax, and contributes nothing beyond a worthless waste of bandwidth.
Stats have shown that the accident curve on pilots is highest up to 900 hrs. of flight time (rotary wing time) then they drop off gradually. The pilot only had 800 hours of flight time and he just received his commercial license in 2023 – one factor to consider - ie: mast bump issue.
Such a sad and tragic outcome for what had been planned as part of a happy birthday celebration for one of the kids. Not being a helo driver, a fixed winger with some brief exposure to controlling a helo while accompanied by an experienced helo driver, I’m curious as to what could cause an entire rotor assembly to detach from the helo during what would appear from the video to be a stable 1g flight condition though there may have been CAT.
True, but most mast-bump failures in semi-rigid rotor systems cause the blades to separate from the mast. In this case, you can clearly see from the photos that the blades are both still connected to the mast, and the mast is still attached to the transmission. That’s not to say that the bumping forces couldn’t have caused the transmission to separate from the powerplant and airframe as a unit, but it seems a stretch. As of now, they still haven’t found the rotor/transmission assembly that was photographed falling intact but separately from the fuselage. This looks like improper or insufficient maintenance and inspection to me.
My wife just told me about a NYT article which included a statement about metal particles in the transmission oil. As I am an A&P, that’s piqued my curiosity about the maintenance logs and history of the aircraft. Finding the missing parts should answer many questions.
One might think that a sudden stoppage of the transmission could have sheared its drive shaft and ripped it and everything attached to it, out of the fuselage.
Which could have caused the sudden, dramatic adverse yaw seen in the video, which in turn could have overstressed and separated the tail boom. I won’t make assumptions, but the maintenance history including the reported September 2024 transmission metal chips and bearing failure, as well as the company’s reported financial troubles will certainly get a lot of attention from the NTSB.
He was never a SEAL. Shame on this publication for not checking on that. Now the family is embarrassed. He served at a SEAL Team in a support role but never graduated from BUD/S.