liberty helicopter shortly after 7:00 eastern time killing all five passengers on board. my name is mayday, mayday. reporter: the desperate pilot of this helicopter sending a frantic mayday call after losing altitude over east river. say it one more time. engine failure over the east river. reporter: amateur video capturing the helicopter plunging into the freezing river, then tipping over and taking on water. there were six people in the helicopter. the pilot freed himself, the other five did not. and he was like asking for help. reporter: tug boats rapidly arriving on the scene. emergency responders working desperately to rescued the trap passengers. the five people besides the pilot were all tightly harnessed so these harnesses had to be cut and removed in order to get these folks off of this helicopter which was upside down at the time and completely
to confirm the identity of the pilot. he s 33-year-old richard vance, who has reportedly been flying helicopters for a long time according to family members, and is said to be cooperating with investigators today. bill: had this company had problems before, laura? reporter: we ve been looking into the safety record of liberty helicopters. it does promote itself as the largest and most experienced helicopter sight seeing helicopter service in the northeast. but there have been several accidents. you might remember we reported on this in 2009. there was a really bad crash. a liberty helicopter and a small plane collided above the hudson river when five italian tourists and the pilot were killed. in 2007 one of the companies fell 500 feet into the hudson river. but that pilot was able to save the seven passengers. ntsb will be on the scene shortly and we will bring you developments. bill: thank you starting us off in manhattan.