Helicopter Crash Lands on Roof of Midtown Manhattan High-Rise, On Fire

[lope]

Helicopter Makes Hard Landing on Roof of Midtown Manhattan High-Rise
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Midtown-Manhattan-Accident-Sixth-Avenue-Midtown-Accident-511081461.html
A helicopter made a hard landing on the roof of a 54-story office building in midtown Manhattan Monday, sparking a fire and causing at least one injury, two senior city officials tell News 4. 
A call about the incident at the AXA Equitable Center on Seventh Avenue and West 49th Street came in shortly before 2 p.m. The NYPD confirmed the hard landing on the roof of 787 Seventh Avenue; it wasn't clear why the chopper would have tried to land there, nor was it clear who owned the chopper. 

The structure of the building is not damaged, according to the FDNY.

Posting from the 30th floor on seventh ave, 5 blocks down from the accident.

Can confirm: shits fucking scary and spooked everybody

[Grenadiac]

Sounds like an engine-out situation and the pilot went for the nearest flat surface. Not sure why the article keeps trying to insinuate that there may have been a criminal/terror purpose.

[elix]

Because it's NYC and aaaaaaaa 9/11 aaaaaa, sensationalism sells.

[lope]

Well to be fair to the media, before any of the details got out everyone was thinking 9/11. Nobody really said it, but you could tell everyone was shit scared. I think the news did a pretty good job of clearing up any malicious intent after 30-40 minutes.

One of the witnesses they interviewed on the news, who was in the building, was in that building because her company moved there after the towers fell. So, it's reasonable that people were concerned. It's weird having grown up outside of Manhattan and then working here. From the outside, 9/11 was a terrible thing that we mostly moved pasted. From inside the city, though, it's still very much taboo and many people can't even go past the 10th floor of a building without becoming mentally unfit. It's a real terror that many of the people here directly lived through, and you don't just move past that. You can't just make jokes about 9/11 after seeing the city filled with debris and so many friends gone.

[StrawberryClock]

For those who don't know, losing engine power in a helicopter can still be very safe as the rotor blades can still provide lift through what's called autorotation. Autorotation is basically rotors maintaining their rotational speed though airflow going through them while the helicopter is in a controlled glide. Basically you trade altitude or airspeed for blade rotor rotational speed. The only issue is that it's only truly safe is you have a lot of space to maneuver. Autorotation in a city can be much more hazardous due to that.