Helicopter Service
The building previously had helicopter service to Pan Am's terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a 7-to-10-minute flight from the rooftop helipad. The New York Airways Vertol 107 flights lasted from December 21, 1965, to February 18, 1968; Sikorsky S-61 flights operated for a few months in 1977, ending after an accident atop the building killed five people.
On May 16, 1977, about one minute after a Sikorsky S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five 20-foot blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men, including film director Michael Findlay, were killed instantly and another man died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured.
Read more about this topic: MetLife Building
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)