AUDIO: NJ helicopter pilot mayday call for emergency landing in Bayonne

This is the helicopter that made that hard landing, an emergency landing, the Bayonne Pier. This is the Port Liberty container. It is something that happened at about 9 o'clock this morning. It was a hard landing, two people on board, a sightseeing helicopter, and we did just get the Mayday call. So we were able to take the audio of the Mayday call and match it up with some of the video that you're seeing here. It runs about a minute and ten seconds. I haven't heard this yet, so let's take a listen into the Mayday call together. All right, so that audio is from liveatc.net. Again, liveatc.net. They often are able to get access to some of the conversations that happen between these pilots and some of the flight officials who kind of help navigate things. So, again, I mean, what you heard there, what we heard for the first time there is confirmation from the pilot. And you assume that is the pilot who was talking. Right. saying that there was an engine out. And then you heard the air traffic control person saying, do you have a good place to land? And she said, yes, I think I do. And so that's when it sounded like the decision was made that they would make that landing at the marine terminal in Bayonne, which is just outside a container terminal. Anyone who knows that area, Um, you know, this is like kind of the, they call it the back roads. That's, that's what they call it. It's kind of an industrial, uh, part of the city that's just kind of on the outskirts. Um, so again, the, uh, FAA says two people were on board. This is a Bell 206 helicopter. It landed on this road just outside, uh, lost the tail. And it is something that the, uh, NTSB is now going to be investigating. What we heard there for the first time, confirmation. from the pilot itself that they had an engine out. So if an engine loses power, a helicopter can still make a controlled descent. Pilots are definitely trained in that maneuver. It's sort of like when the airflow keeps the main rotor turning as the helicopter descends. So it sounds like that may have been the maneuver that the helicopter, the pilot there, had to try to pull off. The other element there, I mean, you can look at the flight right there, the helicopter right there, that the tail, the rotor, seems to have come off. The tail rotor sort of is the countering force to the main rotor and helps the pilot control the helicopter's direction. So you have the engine that failed. And then was there also a problem then with the rotor because you have to have the main one on top, the main rotor that is going to work in collaboration with what's happening in the back. That's just how helicopters work, okay? And so if there's a problem with one, there's going to be a problem with the other. And if there was an engine failure, I mean, they have a range of things that are happening could have definitely been much worse than what we saw. And if Skyfox zooms out, I don't know if they will, but if they zoom out, you can see how close... There we go. You can see how close this is. Look how close this is to the water. So that's just kind of a bank, and then it kind of goes down, and the rocks that you see... There, there, there, there. That's how close it is to the water. So they decided that they had to make this landing. And look, that's what they did. All right, so we just got that information. We showed you the Mayday call. And that's what happened.