Longtime helicopter critic U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is calling for mandatory flight data recorders (FDRs) in all rotorcraft in the wake of last week’s crash of a Leonardo AW109E atop a Manhattan high-rise. The light twin model year 2000 AW109 went down in rain, fog, and limited visibility and was not equipped with either an FDR or a cockpit voice recorder (CVR). Pilot Tim McCormack, the sole occupant, died. He was not instrument-rated and had pierced the boundary of the midtown Manhattan TFR.
Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said, “To know that the NTSB has been trying for years, without success, to compel the FAA to take action as it relates to making helicopters more valuable to safety by installing flight data recorders is cause for serious concern. If we are going to have helicopters in the air, even highly regulated in terms of when and where they can fly, they should still have black boxes, if, god forbid, a crash occurs. We do this for commercial planes, so it makes all the sense in the world for choppers, too."
New York’s junior U.S. senator and current presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand (D) echoed those sentiments. The NTSB is expected to issue a preliminary report on the accident within two weeks.