Official: Bag may have caused deadly chopper crash

NEW YORK — The pilot who survived a helicopter crash that killed his five passengers told authorities he believed a passenger’s bag might have hit an emergency fuel shutoff switch in the moments before the chopper went down, a federal official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The official was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly about it and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The National Transportation Safety Board later said it would look at the switch, the chopper’s flotation devices and even the photos on passengers’ cameras to figure out what caused the crash Sunday in New York City’s East River.

NTSB member Bella Dinh-zarr said the agency hasn’t spoken yet to the pilot but hopes to do so.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” pilot Richard Vance said in an emergency radio call as the Eurocopter AS350 tour helicopter foundered Sunday night. “East River — engine failure.”

The chopper flipped over and quickly sank, killing Tristan Hill,

29, a former basketball team assistant originally from Reno who was engaged to be married; Brian Mcdaniel, 26, a Texas firefighter; Trevor Cadigan, 26, a video journalist who was a high school friend of Mcdaniel; Carla Vallejos Blanco, 29, an Argentine woman; and Daniel Thompson, 34, who had moved to New York for work.

The copter’s six emergency floats did inflate, but Dinh-zarr said investigators would look at whether there were any problems with the devices. The NTSB and other agencies involved in the probe also hope to recover the passengers’ cameras and electronics “to capture a digital portrait of the last moments of this flight,” she said.