helicopter that crashed on a manhattan skyscraper rooftop

The scene after the crash on (Photo by Richard Lee/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. The heliport on the Pan Am building was closed and never reopened.

Four died, and another person on the street was killed when a falling piece of blade hit her. Its rotors were spinning as it waited to take off and the rotor blades, cut off as the helicopter fell on its side, sliced through people waiting to board. On May 16, 1977, a huge Sikorsky S-61 helicopter belonging to New York Airways flipped on top of the Pan Am Building, where a heliport had been operating for years. It also put an end to helicopter landings on top of buildings in the city. In 1977, an accident that killed five people in Midtown created a sensation and highlighted the dangers of flying helicopters among skyscrapers. Helicopter commuting was common in New York until the late 1970s. For about two decades, helicopters were actually a common means of commuting between Manhattan and the city's airports, and even between those airports. Monday's accident in midtown Manhattan, in which the pilot died when his helicopter crash-landed on a West Side skyscraper, called to mind another era.

But the ubiquitous thump of helicopter blades is not a recent addition to the city it has been a Manhattan feature since the early 1950s. Helicopters are a constant sight in Manhattan, where they whizz by the city hundreds of times a day, taking off from three heliports next to the rivers around the island.

Helicopter that crashed on a manhattan skyscraper rooftop