Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- A sightseeing helicopter filled with European tourists and a small plane headed for the New Jersey shore collided yesterday, plunging both aircraft into the Hudson River and probably killing nine people.

Two bodies were found in the wreckage of what may be the helicopter, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a televised news conference yesterday. It’s unlikely there were any survivors, he said.

A third body believed to be a passenger in the plane was recovered before the search was suspended last night, said Lieutenant John Grimpel of the New York Police Department. The search will resume this morning.

“Sadly, there is not a lot of rescue to do here,” Bloomberg said. “It is all recovery.” The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation.

The helicopter was carrying a pilot and five Italian tourists, while the plane that left Teterboro Airport in New Jersey had a pilot and two passengers, one of them a child, the mayor said.

The accident happened around noon local time, on a bright, sunny day with temperatures in the mid-70s that attracted joggers and bicyclists to the shores of the Hudson. Witnesses on both the New York and New Jersey sides of the river caught bits and pieces of the accident as it unfolded.

“I heard a very loud bang, and saw a plane, a small plane which looked like it had a wing missing,” Arnold Stevens, who was staying at a hotel in Manhattan near the river, told CNN.

“The plane was corkscrewing into the water and the helicopter dropped like a rock,” he said.

Teterboro Airport

The helicopter, operated by Liberty Helicopter Tours of New York, took off from the West 30th Street heliport and was climbing and heading south when it was struck by the plane, Bloomberg said. He said he didn’t know how high the two aircraft were when they collided.

Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which operates Teterboro Airport, about five miles west of Manhattan, said the plane was a single-engine Piper Saratoga. It landed at 11:20 a.m. local time to pick up two passengers, and took off at 11:54 a.m. bound for Ocean City, New Jersey.

Bloomberg said authorities will remove the bodies from what is likely the helicopter wreckage, which is 30 feet (9 meters) under the surface of the Hudson River. Divers are having trouble with visibility in the water, the mayor said.

City Excursions

The airplane was a Piper PA-32R-300, which was registered to LCA Partnership of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration records. The helicopter was a Eurocopter AS 350 BA, registered to Meridian Consulting I Corp. of Linden, New Jersey.

Police in Ocean City referred questions to the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac said she couldn’t confirm the total number of fatalities or injuries.

Liberty Tours, which says on its Web site it’s the largest helicopter sightseeing and charter service in the U.S. Northeast, runs excursions around the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Manhattan at costs ranging from about $130 to about $250.

The skies over Hudson and East Rivers that surround Manhattan are crowded with commuter planes as well as helicopters shuttling among John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia Airport. There are heliports at East 34th Street, West 30th Street and Wall Street.

Visual Flight Rules

“There’s nothing inherently unsafe about flying the Hudson corridor, but it does require every pilot to be extremely vigilant,” said David Pascoe, 46, a private pilot from Leominster, Massachusetts, and founder of LiveATC.net, which offers live air-traffic control communications.

“Visual flight rules is what it’s all about -- keeping your head out the window, scanning the sky,” he said. He said pilots flying at low altitude are “self announced,” meaning they broadcast their location to other pilots using a common radio frequency.

Bloomberg said general aviation aircraft, such as the small plane involved in the collision, can fly no higher than 1,000 feet when over the Hudson River. He said there was a common radio frequency available to pilots flying over the river, but they aren’t required to use it.

The accident is the second one in the Hudson River this year.

In January, a US Airways Group Inc. Airbus SAS A320 was forced to ditch in the river after losing thrust from both engines on takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

All 155 passengers and crew on board survived and New York Governor David Paterson hailed the incident as a “miracle on the Hudson.”

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News’s parent, Bloomberg LP.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Hart in Washington at dahart@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 9, 2009 00:01 EDT