AIRPLANE ACCIDENT IN NEW YORK CITY

The airplane accident in NYC on Wednesday brought back a flood of memories. Back to when we were flying for New York Airways. New York Airways was a shuttle service that flew passengers, mail and cargo between the major airports in the New York city area.
Back to when we were flying S-55's, S-58's and Vertol 44's. All single engine helicopters. The helicopters had floats so we could land at the riverfront heliports in the city. We had to fly certain routes and altitudes so we always had an emergency landing area in the event of an engine failure or other mechanical problem. If you had an engine failure, you had less than a minute to land the helicopter. Believe me, it is an exciting ride. It would take about 10 minutes to go from LGa to JFK and about 20 minutes to go from LGA to EWR. There were always delays, so you never were able to get out of the helicopter except when you ere fueling. There was no air conditioning and very little heat so you roasted during the summers and froze during the winters. All the flying was VFR so you had to be careful of the weather. You generally flew about 12 to 15 days a month.
As the technology improved, so did our helicopters. We flew Sikorsky 61's and Vertol 107's. They both had two turbine engines and carried up to 25 passengers. With their increased speed and twin engine capabilities, we were able to cut our enroute times in half and reduce our weather minimums. This did not ease our day as we just flew more trips. It enabled us increase our utilization of the NY heliports. We opened the heliport on the top of the Pan Am building in Manhattan.
For several years we also flew De Haviland Twin Otter airplanes between the airports.
These carried between 18 to 20 passengers. They had short takeoff and landing capability, so we did not use he same runways as the larger aircraft but rather special shorter runways away from the regular aircraft traffic. This was an interesting break from the helicopters.
The flying was very intense. We were always in an airport control zone and were in constant radio contact with the control towers and the company. We flew in and out of the airports so much that we developed a rapore with the controllers. We recognized their voices as I am sure they recognized our voices. We did not land on runways but rather used taxiway intersections for our landing zones. This meant that we had to be aware of taxiing aircraft and coordinate all our movements with the ground controller. We had to be careful of the prop and jet blasts from taxiing airplanes.
There was an element of physical risk involved. During my 22 years flying for NYA, there were 5 accidents that involved fatalities.
With a lot of things in life......While I was doing it, it sure was a tough way to earn a living....but I sure missed it when it was over.
Here are a couple of pictures of our aircraft.