First lawsuit filed and they are going after the pilot as well as the 'photo shoot' operators:
The family of a Dallas journalist who died in a helicopter crash Sunday says the harnesses passengers were wearing prevented them from escaping from New York City's East River.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York state court says Trevor Cadigan was unable to escape from his seat on the Eurocopter AS350B2 because of the harness he was cinched into.
Cadigan, along with his friend Dallas Fire-Rescue firefighter Brian McDaniel and three other people, drowned when the charter helicopter capsized in the river, medical examiners said.
The passengers had been on board for a private photo shoot. Only the pilot survived.
The way passengers were harnessed, with a release mechanism in the back, there "was just no prospect of safely escaping," said Gary C. Robb, a lawyer for Cadigan's parents.
"Hanging upside-down in frigid water — stunned by the helicopter crash, tightly harnessed, release inaccessible, with no advanced training — is a death trap," Robb said.
The lawsuit, which names Liberty Helicopters, the pilot and others, seeks unspecified damages, but Robb says the family mainly wants to end open-door flights for taking aerial photos.
Liberty Helicopters did not respond to requests for comment and referred inquiries to federal authorities.
The lawsuit alleges Liberty Helicopters is vicariously liable for the actions of the pilot, Richard Vance, and states that he was "negligent and careless in failing to take reasonable steps to extricate the passengers ... after he secured his own release."
Passengers' safety harnesses on open-door photo tours are different from pilots' seat belts, said helicopter pilot Bill Richards, of the aerial photography company New York Film Flyers.
"The pilot survived because the pilot has a single-point release on his seatbelt. It's sitting right in front of him right in the middle," Richards said. "All he has to do is pull up one lever and the seatbelt comes apart, and he's practiced getting in and out of the aircraft hundreds and hundreds of times and knows exactly how to do that."
Harnesses made to keep overzealous passengers from falling out of an aircraft's open door, he said, are much harder to unstrap. Passengers get a knife they can use to cut themselves free, but that doesn't mean the passengers know how to use them.
The lawsuit alleges that the policy of providing a knife for passengers to cut through their harnesses and free themselves is "grossly negligent and reckless." It also refers to the harnesses secured from the back with a carabiner as a "death trap" because they do not permit passengers to activate the release mechanisms on their own.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cour...licopter-crash