Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on NY1's 'Mornings on 1'

April 11, 2025

Pat Kiernan: There are still so many questions this morning after the helicopter carrying the Escobar family tourists from Spain and a pilot crashed into the Hudson River. The wreckage of the helicopter was pulled out of the water last night, several hours after it tumbled from the sky. The fuselage was immediately taken to an Army Corps of Engineers facility in New Jersey where it can be pulled apart and examined as the investigation continues into what happened.

An NTSB team arrived here last night. We do expect to hear from them at some point today. Yesterday's crash raised so many questions about whether there should be tourist helicopter flights over the city and around the city. Councilmember Christopher Marte's district includes the Wall Street Heliport. In a statement yesterday, he described yesterday's incident as wholly preventable. He wrote, helicopters should be reserved for emergency response, essential news coverage, and public safety operations, not sightseeing or luxury travel.

With us now to update the investigation and talk more about that, Mayor Eric Adams and Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker. Good morning to both of you.

Mayor Eric Adams: Good morning. Thank you.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, I will start with you. You were on scene last night. What's the status of the investigation and is it essentially out of the NYPD's hands at this point?

Mayor Adams: Yes, as you indicated, the NTSB is conducting a thorough investigation, and we're going to be there to collaborate with whatever information is needed from the FDNY, NYPD, and we want to also thank the first responders from New Jersey. So our role right now is to be a supportive role, and we're going to give any observation, any video footage, or whatever information we can help to find out exactly what happened in this very tragic incident. And our heart goes out to the family members and those who knew of this wonderful family.

Kiernan: Mayor Adams, you know from your experience back in the day, the way the NYPD and the Fire Department come together. We had New York Waterway ferries trying to help out yesterday. This was another moment when we see the good work of the emergency services.

Mayor Adams: And everyday New Yorkers, you know, that's one thing we do during times of emergencies. New Yorkers step up. As you say, the ferry service, passengers, people who had video footage turned it over and made sure that we can piece together this tragedy to try to prevent any tragedy of this magnitude from taking place. We lost six people, and we're really, we want to make sure that safety is paramount when you're dealing with air travel.

Kiernan: Commissioner, your divers were in the water, that cold water, along with the NYPD divers. Obviously the Fire Department's job is to undertake whatever rescue is necessary, and the firefighters will put themselves in harm's way to do that. But, we've counted at least 17 incidents over the past four decades involving helicopters in New York City.

You know, we're lucky no one on the ground was hurt. This was over the water, and there's been some effort to push the helicopters to the waterfront rather than like in 1977 when that helicopter crashed on top of the Pan Am building. But I wonder what your view is on whether these helicopter flights should continue.

Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker: Yeah, I mean, you know, I have a view on just how great the members of the FDNY do their job every day. We're an all-hazards public safety agency. We respond to any and all emergencies in New York City. We are trained for what happened yesterday. We train as a scuba team. We train as rescue swimmers. We train with our partners at the NYPD, and frankly, we train with our partners on the other side of the river in New Jersey.

You know, we have a fire boathouse just south of 14th Street on the Hudson River, and we patrol the Hudson River every single day with our fireboats. And so yesterday was the culmination of a lot of training and hard work, and our swift response was really quite impressive.

Kiernan: But do you find it frustrating? When you see a pattern and there are a lot of e-bike fires, you as a Fire Department say, we should do something about the e-bikes. Isn't this a similar situation where we should be taking a look at whether these helicopter flights are necessary?

Fire Commissioner Tucker: You know, I think we take a look at that all the time, but air travel in New York is a part of the ecosystem of our tourism and our business community, and frankly, it's my job to make sure that the members of the FDNY are the most highly trained, ready to act fire and rescue service in the world. I believe they are.

Our EMTs and paramedics are the best in the world and the busiest in the world. And so I'm going to focus on making sure that we're here for the 8.5 million people of New York City in our capacity as a Fire Department and leave all that other stuff to smarter people than me.

Kiernan: So Mayor Adams, I want to go over to you on the same issue. There have been calls for the city's Economic Development Corporation to put tighter restrictions on the heliports that it operates. Would you support that?

Mayor Adams: Well, as you saw, as you indicated, and I remember in 1977 when the helicopter crashed into the Pan Am building, we made adjustments and modifications. You can always adjust and modify based on the circumstances. And you indicated that there were 17 crashes over approximately 40 years. Those are the numbers that you have to look at when you make these adjustments.

And we don't ban vehicles on our roads. The number of people that die from vehicle crashes is just astonishing. Air traffic is a safe way of traveling. It is part of our economic ecosystem. Many businesses are attracted to the city because of our air traffic for CEOs and executives. And tourism.

We had 65 million tourists that visited the city last year. People want to see our city from the sky. We need to focus on safety. And if this pilot or if the machinery was not properly maintained and the proper records, that is where our focus is.

Air traffic is part of the ecosystem of the city. We're getting ready to move to electric helicopters. So the call is to make sure this is safe and examine what happened here.

Kiernan: Mr. Mayor, I do want to ask you on one other topic here. You made an announcement yesterday about a crackdown on quality of life crimes in the city. What's your thinking behind putting the NYPD into some of these things that are less in the 911 category and more in the 311 category?

Mayor Adams: NYPD does it well. And when we started this administration, we utilized the NYPD to go after the encampments and the cardboard boxes where people were living in on the street. And what they do is identify, correct the condition if they can, if not, hand it off to the appropriate agency.

New Yorkers have made it clear we've been successful in driving down crime, the stats that are associated with success. Now we want to drive down the feeling that New Yorkers have. Abandoned vehicles, people openly using, injecting themselves with drugs, all of those things are making New Yorkers feel unsafe.

And our success of making the city safe, the least number of shootings in the court in the history of this city, is some of the things that we've been successful on. Now we have to move to the area of making people feel safe and quality of life issues is part of that.

Kiernan: With us from Gracie Mansion this morning, Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker and Mayor Eric Adams. Thank you this morning.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

Fire Commissioner Tucker: Thanks, Pat.

Mayor Adams: Take care.