COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio has adopted the 1905 Wright Flyer III as its official state airplane.
Described as Orville and Wilbur Wright's crowning achievement, the world's first practical fixed-wing aircraft made its seminal sustained flight in an Ohio cow pasture called Huffman Prairie, outside Dayton.
A grandniece to the pioneering Ohio brothers, Amanda Wright Lane, testified in February that the 1905 plane was “their Tesla,” and represented the beginning of a human flight plan to Mars.
Wright Lane noted that NASA's experimental Martian helicopter, Ingenuity, succeeded using what officials called Wright-like flights. The space agency subsequently named its air strip on Mars “Wright Brothers Field.”
“Present-day Ohio engineering ingenuity was a part of that Ingenuity mission. Why wouldn't we adopt the Wright Flyer III as an inspiring symbol of the genesis of human flight?” she said. “Ohioans lessened the distances between world peoples 125 years ago, and currently, Ohioans are lessening the distances in space.”
The Wright Flyer III featured a host of improvements to the Wright Flyer I, the plane in which the Wrights pioneered powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on Dec. 17, 1903. Those included a larger rudder, a vertical stabilizer relocated rearward and separate yaw and roll controls, the Ohio History Connection's Kevin Boehner told the committee.
Choosing the later plane as Ohio's designee glances past the state's long-running dispute with North Carolina over which can rightly call itself the “birthplace of aviation”: the one where the Wrights did their inventing, or the one where they flew.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed its new state designation into law Wednesday. The plane, designated a historic landmark, can be seen at Dayton's Carillion Historical Park.
FILE - Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine speaks during a news conference, Dec. 29, 2023, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair Thursday and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront, killing six people, including a family of Spanish tourists, in the latest high-profile aviation disaster in the U.S., officials said.
Mayor Eric Adams said the flight began at a downtown heliport around 3 p.m. and that the dead had been recovered and removed from the water.
Witness Bruce Wall said he saw the helicopter “falling apart” in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. The propeller was still spinning without the aircraft as it fell, he said.
Lesly Camacho, a hostess at a restaurant along the river in Hoboken, New Jersey, said she saw the helicopter spinning uncontrollably before it slammed into the water.
“There was a bunch of smoke coming out. It was spinning pretty fast, and it landed in the water really hard,” she said in a phone interview.
Video posted to social media showed parts of the chopper splashing into the water, and the overturned aircraft was submerged, with rescue boats circling it.
The skies were overcast at the time, but visibility over the river was not substantially impaired. Rescue crews had to deal with 45-degree water temperatures.
The Federal Aviation Administration identified the helicopter as a Bell 206, a model widely used in commercial and government aviation, including by sightseeing companies, TV news stations and police departments. It was initially developed for the U.S. Army before being adapted for other uses. Thousands have been manufactured over the years.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would investigate.
The rescue craft were near the end of a long maintenance pier for a ventilation tower serving the Holland Tunnel on the New Jersey side of the river. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were on nearby streets with their lights flashing.
The skies over Manhattan are routinely filled with planes and helicopters, both private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights. Manhattan has several helipads that whisk business executives and others to destinations throughout the metropolitan area.
Over the years, there have been multiple crashes, including a collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson River in 2009 that killed nine people and the 2018 crash of a charter helicopter offering “open door” flights that went down into the East River, killing five people.
A medical transport plane killed seven people when it plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January. That happened two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in midair in Washington — the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation.
The crashes and other close calls have left some people worried about the safety of flying.
First responders from New Jersey and New York respond to the scene where a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In this photo taken from video, a helicopter falls from the sky into the Hudson River , Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (Bruce Wall via AP)
A crane vessel arrives at the scene where a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
As seen from Pier 40 in New York, police and fire crews from New York and New Jersey respond to the scene where a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
As seen from Pier 40 in New York, police and fire crews from New York and New Jersey respond to the scene Thursday, April 10, 2025, where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
As seen from Pier 40 in New York, police and fire crews from New York and New Jersey respond to the scene Thursday, April 10, 2025, where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
First responders from New Jersey and New York respond to the scene where a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
As seen from Pier 40 in New York, police and fire crews from New York and New Jersey respond to the scene Thursday, April 10, 2025, where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River between Manhattan and the New Jersey waterfront. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
First responders walk along Pier 40, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in New York, across from where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
A New York Fire Department Marine 1 boat departs from Pier 40, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in New York, across from where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
First responders walk along Pier 40, Thursday, April 10, 2025, in New York, across from where a helicopter went down in the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
