A helicopter carrying tourists crashed yesterday in NYC’s East River, killing a woman and injuring three other passengers.

In a city with a dark history of aviation disasters (and near-misses), Tuesday’s accident occurred just after the helicopter took off from the 34th Street heliport at around 3:30pm. Speaking to reporters, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the dead woman had been trapped in the sinking craft. Four others who were on the helicopter escaped.

Bloomberg confirmed that some of the five people on board were related to one other. Two are in critical condition in Bellevue Hospital, and a third is in serious condition New York University Hospital. The pilot was successfully treated at the scene. Bloomberg talked the press through the accident:

“The pilot reported having trouble keeping aloft, and he tried to turn back but crashed into the water just north of the landing pad. Four out of the five got out on their own, the fifth got trapped.”

The survivors were aided in the water by emergency services personnel and police officers who jumped into the river. A police scuba team later recovered the body of the trapped woman.

The passengers have been confirmed as a British couple and two Australian friends. They include Paul Nicholson, 71, his wife Harriett Nicholson, 60, and her daughter, Sonia Marra, 40. Marra’s friend, also 40, was the fourth passenger. It is not yet known which passenger died.

Mayor Bloomberg praised the responses of emergency services, describing it as “everything you could ask for.” The helicopter was a Bell 206B, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration records.

NYC Helicopter Crash Kills Female Passenger is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ya, I’ve got a sick sense of humor so sue me.

This was actually from an ad to encourage people to buckle up so you have a problem take it up with them.

Osama’s drop to the ocean caught on video is a post from: The Inquisitr

The U.S. raid to finally get Osama bin Laden; dead or alive, is going to be one of those historic moments we will all talk about for years to come. Opinion on whether to release the photos of Bin Laden’s death is raging and the identities of the  incredible Navy SEALS team who pulled off the impossible is still a secret.

But there is one other part of this story that has been getting its own special kind of attention. I am of course referring to the helicopters that were used in the raid. While much of the main stream media is centered around the Bin Laden aspect of the story there is a group of aviation and intelligence experts that have been captivated by what little information that has been glean from a few images of the helicopter which malfunctioned during the raid and was blown up.

David Axe at Wired’s Danger Room blog has a great post that explores the subject with some great detail but it seems that the general consensus is that these helicopters were either specifically reconfigured machines for this job alone or are quite possibly a helicopter we haven’t even seen yet, let alone heard whispers of.

Considering the proliferation of bewildering photos from the crash site, the conservative viewpoint seems unlikely. Equally, the notion of a brand-new “black” helicopter seems far-fetched, especially considering the Army’s long history of heavily modifying existing rotorcraft for secret missions.

That leaves an upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60 as the most likely candidate — a conclusion that jibes with CIA director Leon Panetta’s assertion Tuesday that the 25-man strike team was “carried in two Blackhawk helicopters that went in.”

A story by ace reporter Sean Naylor in Army Times, published just minutes after the initial version of this post, supports this conclusion. Naylor quotes a retired Special Forces aviator saying the special Blackhawk, modified by Lockheed Martin, has “hard edges, sort of like an … F-117″ stealth fighter from the same company.

According to a source who spoke to our own Spencer Ackerman, the modifications might have taken place with the help of a mysterious Army organization called the “Technology Applications Program Office,” located at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

David points out in his post that if this is indeed a more stealthy helicopter that has proven how well it works, as evidenced by this raid, then the implications are possibly very big.

In any event, the implications are potentially enormous. For one, the existence of a stealthy helicopter means we must revise upward our assessment of U.S. Special Operations Forces’ ability to strike fast and unseen, all over the world.

Second, we should take with a grain of salt all the recent hand-wringing over the supposed decay in the American military rotorcraft industry. If we really have already fielded the world’s first radar-evading helicopter, there’s less reason to worry that the United States might have lost its chopper-making skills.

Third, the fact that the Pentagon was willing to risk its most secret whirlybird “shows the importance of the mission in the eyes of U.S. commanders,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, who was, as usual, among the first to report on the new chopper.

Here is an artist’s rendering by aviation artist Ugo Crisponi, based on current information, of what these secret helicopters could look like compared to its brethren already in use.

Speculation is rampant when it comes to the secret copters used in Bin Laden raid is a post from: The Inquisitr

These drone aircraft are getting pretty cool. From bigger to smaller to things like this really neat remote-controlled helicopter all kinds of uses are being found but this one has an advantage over other drones – it can pick up packages and fly off with them.

The Yale Aerial Manipulator can fly up to 80 miles per hour and carry objects that weight up to 4.5 pounds. It does this using a robotic hand that has four fingers, runs on a single motor and built out a material meant to help absorb shock and vibration.

via io9

Drone helicopter performs flying snatch and grab [VIDEO] is a post from: The Inquisitr

A growing segment of the US Armed Forces arsenal is its collection of Predators and Reapers otherwise known as drones. These remotely controlled flying spies and killers are constantly seeing action in multiple places around the world as everyone from the US Border Patrol to the US Coast Guard wants a piece of this flying technology.

It is almost getting to the point where these flying wonders are becoming passe and old fashioned. Not one to rest on its technological laurels the US Special Forces Command (SOCOM) is upping the flying drone stakes when it takes possession of a radically new drone from Boeing. This revolutionary new drone is actually a helicopter with the moniker of the A160T Hummingbird.

According to Janes SOCOM has already begun taking delivery of the Hummingbird which folks in the know are saying can be used for re-supply and surveillance missions. Additionally it these birds will soon be equipped with a new radar that can identify enemy targets hiding beneath dense tree cover.

Apparently SOCOM will have 10 of these super quiet Hummingbirds ready for action by the end of November of this year.

[graphic courtesy of Danger Room]

This ain’t your normal hummingbird is a post from: The Inquisitr