Six people, including three children, died when a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River near New York City on Thursday.

The aircraft went down in the vicinity of the West Side Highway and Spring Street on Manhattan’s West Side, the New York Police Department said.

Six people were on board, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams : two adults and three children visiting from Spain, and the pilot.

What happened

The first calls came in around 3:17 p.m., according to the Fire Department. Emergency response agencies were on the scene for rescue operations within minutes, authorities said.

The helicopter, a Bell 206, landed in the water on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, near Hoboken, officials said. It departed from a downtown Manhattan heliport around 2:59 p.m. and briefly traveled south before turning north up the Hudson River.

It reached the George Washington Bridge at 3:08 p.m., NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. The helicopter then turned to travel southward along the New Jersey shoreline before it lost control and hit the water, Tisch said. The helicopter appears to have been inverted when it crashed, she said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash to determine the cause. The NTSB will lead the investigation. President Trump said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would monitor investigation developments.

New York Helicopter

The aircraft was flying for New York Helicopter, a tour company, Tisch said.

New York Helicopter has faced financial challenges in recent months, court records show. Wynwood Capital Group, a cash-advance firm, sued New York Helicopter in February in state court, alleging that it advanced the tour company $50,000 in January in exchange for nearly $75,000 in future receivables. Days later, New York Helicopter blocked Wynwood from recouping the money, the lawsuit alleges.

PHI Aviation, a helicopter-services company, accused New York Helicopter in a federal lawsuit in January of defaulting on lease payments last year for a Bell 407 helicopter. PHI ultimately repossessed the leased helicopter in December, the lawsuit says.

New York Helicopter has yet to respond to either lawsuit in court filings. An exhibit in the PHI Aviation case includes an email from New York Helicopter’s president, Michael Roth , complaining to PHI about the leased helicopter, saying that it broke down and wasn’t operable for a week.

Records also show that Roth has operated New York Helicopter Charter, a company that filed for bankruptcy in 2019.

Previous crashes

NTSB records show that in 2015 an aircraft operated by New York Helicopter Charter crashed from about 20 feet off the ground. The hard landing occurred in Kearny, N.J. The aircraft was a Bell 206L-3, the NTSB report said, owned by Meridian Helicopters LLC but operated by New York Helicopter. A review of maintenance records revealed that the helicopter had also experienced a hard landing in Chile in 2010.

NTSB records show that in 2013 a Bell 206 helicopter operated by New York Helicopter lost engine power during a sightseeing tour over the city. The pilot made an emergency landing on the Hudson River. The pilot and four passengers stayed inside until help arrived and were unharmed, the report said.

Neither Roth nor the company New York Helicopter responded to a request for comment.

Write to Ginger Adams Otis at Ginger.AdamsOtis@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com