By MICHAEL R. SISAK
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Federal investigators say the helicopter company whose doors-off flight crashed in a New York City river last year exploited a regulatory loophole to avoid stricter safety requirements. All five passengers were trapped in their harnesses and drowned in the March 2018 crash that was the subject of a National Transportation Safety Board hearing Tuesday. The NTSB chairman says the company operated under the least stringent standards “to the detriment of their customer's safety" because it described the purpose of its flights as photography, not sightseeing. The agency vice chairman says it was a loophole big enough to “drive a truck through.”

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