What is believed to be the body of Jordan Sims was found by crews searching for him about 8:45 a.m. Wednesday, the county agency stated. He will be taken a medical examiner’s office in Richmond for positive identification.
“People want to see the city from the sky,” he said on WINS radio, though he added that “it must be done right.”The Democrat said the city’s airspace is highly regulated, pilots are well-trained and the aircraft are well maintained.
Not everyone has his level of comfort.“Personally, I don’t go on them,” Al Yurman, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said of helicopter tours. “I feel like the industry doesn’t look after itself the way it should.”Tourist flights seemed like they might be in jeopardy after a disaster in 2009, when a Liberty Helicopters sightseeing flight carrying Italian visitors collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine.
Flowers rest at the end of a pier, Friday, April 11, 2025, near the site where a sightseeing helicopter crashed a day earlier into the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)Flowers rest at the end of a pier, Friday, April 11, 2025, near the site where a sightseeing helicopter crashed a day earlier into the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
After that crash, which involved missed radio communications, a distracted air traffic controller and two pilots who didn’t see each other until it was too late, the Federal Aviation Administration created new safety rules for the congested airspace over the city’s rivers.
A few years later, New York City cut the number of flights allowed at Manhattan’s downtown heliport in half, capping them at just under 30,000 a year.Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego speaks during a news conference, Feb. 27, 2025, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
Francis named McElroyin January, tapping one of his most progressive allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. McElroy criticized Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants as “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” Francis appointed McElroy bishop of San Diego in 2015 and
in 2022. McElroy, 71, was one of a few U.S. bishops assailing a campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion. He has also expressed support for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church. A native San Franciscan, McElroy received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s degree and doctorate from Stanford, and a doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome.Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, stands for a portrait in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sept. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca, File)