Latest news with #StoptheChop
American Military News
26-05-2025
- Politics
- American Military News
After fatal crash, proposed law would ban tourist helicopter flights around NYC
New Jersey and New York congressional members have proposed a bill that would ban 'non-essential' helicopter flights like the one that crashed on April 10. The bill comes at the same time a citizens group has asked federal officials for an immediate ban. Roughly a month after a tourist helicopter plunged into the Hudson River near Jersey City, killing all six people aboard, a federal bill has been introduced that would ban tourist and other 'non-essential' helicopter flights within a 20-mile radius of the Statue of Liberty. The bipartisan bill, proposed by U.S. Reps. Rob Menendez (D-8th Dist.), Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), and Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), would ground non-essential helicopter flights starting 60 days after it is signed into law. The bill exempts police, medical, disaster and emergency response, infrastructure maintenance and other helicopter flights deemed to be in the public good, including news media helicopters. A bi-state citizen group, Stop the Chop, asked for an 'immediate ban' on non-essential flights over the New York Metropolitan area in a May 21 letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau. A tourist helicopter broke apart into three pieces in midair and crashed into the Hudson River near Jersey City at 3:15 p.m. on April 10. All six people on board were killed, including a family of five from Spain visiting New York City and the pilot. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the cause. That crash involved a tourist helicopter that was based in Kearny and flew over densely populated Jersey City and Hoboken neighborhoods to reach Manhattan. 'In light of the recent tragedy on April 10 and the ongoing Air Traffic Control shortages in the area, the risks of having more than 100 of these flights cross right over our heads every day is undeniable and needs to be put to an end,' Nick Wierda, a Stop the Chop member and Jersey City resident, said. 'We are urging the federal government, the only body with real regulatory power over our skies, to do just that.' The letter supports the Menendez bill and made it clear that 'we support and respect the vital role of helicopters in medical, law enforcement, military, and emergency operations. We are not calling for any changes to flight paths or rules governing essential aircraft.' Hoboken, Jersey City and New York City councils passed resolutions calling on the Federal Aviation Administration to ban non-essential helicopter traffic over and near populated urban areas in the wake of the crash. The FAA has jurisdiction over the nation's airspace. The FAA took similar action on March 14 in the wake of a deadly collision between a military helicopter and a commuter jet that killed 67 people on Jan. 29 by banning helicopter traffic from the busy airspace near Reagan Airport in Washington. That ban exempted presidential flights, law enforcement and air ambulance flights. It also resulted in the FAA convening a helicopter safety roundtable in April with safety experts, government and industry representatives, where the Hudson River crash was mentioned. Residents said the FAA needs to do the same thing in New York and New Jersey, citing air space that is as congested as in Washington D.C., and the safety risk of flights over densely populated neighborhoods. 'For years this has been a major quality of life issue that has continued to worsen,' said Melissa Elstein, Stop the Chop board chair. 'On high-traffic days, usually weekends when the weather is clear, we see many times north of 100 helicopters zipping out to the Hudson and back in, skimming our roofs, shaking our houses, so close you can see the passengers inside.' Bailey Wood, a spokesperson for Vertical Aviation International, an association of helicopter operators, pilots, owners and manufacturers said accident data says the fatality rate per 100,000 hours of flight are the lowest since 2007. 'The legislation is as misguided as it is short sighted as the future of vertical flight is about to take off in ways we only once imagined,' he said. Advanced air mobility aircraft, like those from Joby, Archer, Supernal and others, will grow the existing helicopter industry to connect people more efficiently across urban, suburban, and rural area, reducing travel time, easing congestion, and creating a new paradigm of accessible and sustainable transportation, Wood said. A total of 8,848 flights went over New York City land or water in May 2023, and a large portion of these flights are non-essential, Menendez said in a March letter to Duffy. An estimated 43% are tours originating from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, the Kearny Heliport and Linden Airport. Helicopters are subject to different minimum altitude restrictions than airplanes, said an FAA spokesperson. Airplanes must fly at least 1,000 feet above the nearest obstacle when over densely populated areas. Helicopter pilots must fly so they don't pose a hazard to people or property on the ground, said Rick Breitenfeldt an FAA spokesperson. 'Helicopters typically fly over the New York and New Jersey area using Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and just outside Newark (airport) Class B airspace,' he said. 'Pilots operating VFR use the see-and-avoid method to conduct their flights. The responsibility for flying neighborly resides with the pilot operating the helicopter.' But residents familiar with the fly neighborly program said that isn't being adhered to, given the low altitudes they said they've observed. 'People in the helicopter industry claim that they do everything they can to 'fly neighborly,' but that has not been our experience,' Wierda said. 'They fly loud and low, with no regard for our safety or sanity.' Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to Larry Higgs may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @CommutingLarry. ©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
New York helicopter crash was ‘entirely predictable', say campaigners
The crash of a tourist helicopter on New York's Hudson River on Thursday that killed a pilot and a Spanish family of five was 'entirely predictable', according to advocates who are calling for the closure of the region's three heliports to non-essential traffic. 'A lot of these helicopters are 30 or even 40 years old, and this one was 21 years old, which is still pretty old,' said Andrew Rosenthal, chair of the Stop the Chop group that has campaigned for an end to helicopter sightseeing trips over New York City and the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. 'In New York if you have a yellow cab you have to get a new one every five to eight years, yet here we are letting these things fly in the sky at 30 and 40 years of age. There's no age limit that I'm aware of, which is crazy. 'This was entirely predictable, and preventable. If we had a rollercoaster that killed people every two years, we would not keep it operating, yet we have the same kind of joy ride in the sky that kills people every couple of years, and we keep changing nothing,' he said. Investigators are working to establish the cause of Thursday's crash, in which witnesses reported seeing the helicopter break up in midair and plunge in pieces into the river that runs between the west side of Manhattan and the eastern shore of New Jersey. According to the Associated Press, at least 38 people have died in helicopter accidents in New York City since 1977. A collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson in 2009 killed nine people and five died in 2018 when a charter helicopter offering 'open door' flights went down into city's the East River. Stop the Chop has documented a succession of other non-fatal incidents involving helicopters in and around New York City in recent years, and Rosenthal said it was beyond time that city officials ended tourism flights from the downtown Manhattan heliport from which the Bell 206 chopper took off on Thursday, and two other public-use helipads on the island of Manhattan. According to the Aviation Property Network, a specialist real estate company, the facilities generate a combined $2.7m annually for New York in lease payments from companies that operate more than 42,000 sightseeing trips annually. 'The mayor can close down the Manhattan downtown heliport tonight, if he wanted to, one stroke of a pen and no other legislation needed,' said Rosenthal, whose group said more than 30,000 of the flights took off from there. 'This is not the first crash, it's another one in a long series. It's predictable. It's going to happen again, it's just a matter of numbers. We're OK with police, military, government, news, those are considered essential in our definition, but these non-essential flights are totally not needed.' Eric Adams, the New York mayor, was asked about sightseeing flights on Friday on the Good Day New York TV show. 'After any form of malfunction, crash or challenge, sometimes that's [the] immediate thought … we should ban the helicopters or we should not have this tourism type of attraction in our city,' he said. 'We have 65 million tourists that came into the city last year. This is all part of the attraction of being in New York. People want to see the city from the sky. 'What is crucial is that any airport or any air device, that is done with the proper maintenance and proper safety. And that's what this investigation is going to determine.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tree felling delayed again after protests
The felling of trees in Falmouth has been delayed again after protests by campaigners. Dozens of protestors gathered in the street to obstruct the operation and sang a modified Trelawney, with some people obstructing the operation by climbing the trees. Deb Newman, from campaign group Stop the Chop, accused Cornwall Council of "acting under their own laws" after plans to remove three lime trees from Trewlawny Road were announced on Monday. Cornwall Council had said ecologists had found "no evidence" of nesting birds or bats and "there is no legal requirement for a formal ecology report". The council previously said the trees were due to be removed because the roots were causing damage to the pavement and road as well as a nearby property. They were first expected to be cut down on 17 March but the operation was delayed following an intervention from police. Ms Newman told BBC Radio Cornwall: "I think what we are seeing here is a council acting under their own laws and are refusing to be accountable to the people who put them there. "We had no idea people would climb the trees and we were concerned, but it's a measure of how how much people care about them." Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@ Planned tree felling postponed after objections Cornwall Council
BBC News
26-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Falmouth tree felling delayed again after protests
The felling of trees in Falmouth has been delayed again after protests by of protestors gathered in the street to obstruct the operation and sang a modified Trelawney, with some people obstructing the operation by climbing the Newman, from campaign group Stop the Chop, accused Cornwall Council of "acting under their own laws" after plans to remove three lime trees from Trewlawny Road were announced on Council had said ecologists had found "no evidence" of nesting birds or bats and "there is no legal requirement for a formal ecology report". The council previously said the trees were due to be removed because the roots were causing damage to the pavement and road as well as a nearby were first expected to be cut down 17 March but it was delayed following an intervention from police. Ms Newman told BBC Radio Cornwall: "I think what we are seeing here is a council acting under their own laws and are refusing to be accountable to the people who put them there."We had no idea people would climb the trees and we were concerned, but it's a measure of how how much people care about them."
