Jury Awards $116 Million to Family of Man Who Died in Helicopter Crash

The helicopter flight began with celebration. “All right — let’s do it!” the pilot shouted just before liftoff from the heliport in New Jersey.

“Party,” said one passenger. “Hooo!” said another.

After flybys of the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center and the Brooklyn Bridge, during which passengers leaned out the open door to shoot photos, the flight ended suddenly 14 minutes after takeoff when the red helicopter plunged into the East River. It tipped on its side, and as cold water flooded the cockpit, the passengers realized they could not escape.

“How do I cut this?” a passenger said, struggling to free himself from the harness that anchored him to the aircraft, according to the transcript of an onboard video from the flight released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

All five passengers died in the March 11, 2018, flight. Only the pilot escaped. The accident was caused by a loose, improvised safety harness that caught on the helicopter’s fuel shut-off lever, mounted on the floor. That activated the lever, killed the engine and caused the crash, the safety board found.

The safety harnesses, meant to prevent passengers from falling out the open door of the helicopter, instead locked the passengers in place, exposing them to “great difficulty extricating themselves” quickly in an emergency, the safety board found.

Six jurors in State Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed on Thursday, awarding $116 million in compensatory and punitive damages to family members of one of the passengers, Trevor Cadigan, 26.