Page 41 - 031318

Groton Daily Independent
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 242 ~ 41 of 46
The Trump administration has ended the program for the other three countries as well.
The lawsuit in California alleges that the U.S. narrowed its criteria for determining whether countries quali ed for temporary protected status and is violating the constitutional rights of people with temporary protected status and their U.S. citizen children.
The lawsuit seeks a court order to reinstate temporary protected status for people from the four coun- tries, but it also proposes an alternative that would protect recipients with school-aged U.S. citizen children for as long as the children remain between ve and 18 years old.
____
Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California.
AP source: Bag may have hit fuel switch before chopper crash By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL BALSAMO, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — A pilot who survived a helicopter crash that killed his ve passengers told authorities he believed a passenger’s bag might have hit an emergency fuel shutoff switch in the moments before the chopper went down, a federal of cial told The Associated Press on Monday.
The of cial was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to speak publicly about it and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would look at the switch, the chopper’s otation devices and even the photos on passengers’ cameras to gure out what caused the crash Sunday in the East River.
NTSB member Bella Dinh-Zarr said the agency hasn’t spoken to the pilot but hopes to do so.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” pilot Richard Vance said in an emergency radio call as the Eurocopter AS350 tour helicopter foundered. “East River — engine failure.”
The chopper ipped over and quickly sank, killing a Texas re ghter, an Argentine woman, a young video journalist, a former basketball team assistant and another person on what authorities said was a charter ight to take photos.
The helicopter’s six emergency oats in ated, but Dinh-Zarr said investigators would look at whether there were any problems with those devices or the harnesses available to passengers on a chopper that was legally allowed to y with its doors open. The NTSB and other agencies involved in the probe also hope to recover the passengers’ cameras and electronics “to capture a digital portrait of the last moments of this ight,” she said.
No one answered an email Monday to Vance, a 33-year-old licensed commercial pilot for seven years who’s also licensed as a ight instructor. A possible phone number for him in Danbury, Connecticut, wasn’t working.
A oating crane slowly raised the submerged helicopter to the surface Monday and towed it off to be examined, as Democratic U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer said federal regulators should suspend ights by the helicopter’s owner until the facts of the crash are known.
The owner, Liberty Helicopters, referred all inquiries to federal authorities. The Federal Aviation Admin- istration said it was investigating whether the ight had met regulations.
Liberty, a tour and charter helicopter company, has been involved in at least ve accidents or other incidents in the last 10 years, according to FAA data. Three incidents ended in safe landings after, for example, one chopper clipped another while taking off from a helipad. But an August 2009 collision over the Hudson River between a Liberty chopper and a small private plane killed nine people, including a group of Italian tourists.
The company paid $23,576 in nes in 2010 and 2011 for violating maintenance, record-keeping and ight operations rules, the FAA said. Three subsequent maintenance violations in 2011 and 2012 didn’t result in any nes.
Witnesses to Sunday’s crash said the helicopter was ying noisily, then suddenly dropped and quickly submerged. A bystander’s video showed the helicopter land hard and then capsize in water about 50 feet (15 meters) deep.