A SINGLE missing or faulty bolt – known in aviation as the “Jesus nut” – may have triggered the catastrophic Hudson River chopper crash, an expert has warned.
Aviation analyst Julian Bray suggested the critical component, which holds the rotor system in place, may have failed mid-flight and led to the deaths of all six people on board.
A lacking or faulty “Jesus nut”, he said, could have caused the chopper blades to detach while still spinning and slice through the aircraft before it plunged into the water.
Just moments before the crash, chilling footage captured the exact moment the Bell 206 helicopter snapped in half and spiralled into the river near New Jersey.
The rotor blades can be seen flying off as the fuselage drops into the Hudson.
Bray told The Sun: “What appears to have happened with this particular helicopter is that the rotor, the main rotor… had detached, because in one video we see the blades spinning away from the helicopter.
“But this appears to have sliced through the back half of the helicopter, so the fuselage then drops like a stone into the river Hudson right opposite Pier 41.”
Bray said that the likely culprit is the so-called “Jesus nut” – a single bolt that holds the entire rotor system together.
“There is a particular procedure which has to be checked every time it’s serviced, and it’s known as the Jesus Bolt… because without that the whole thing will fall apart,” he said.
“It looks as though it’s [the] Jesus bolt or Jesus PIN.
“It’s either defective or wasn’t tightened up, or for some reason it sheared.”
The doomed chopper was carrying a Spanish family from Barcelona, including two Siemens executive parents and their three children, as well as the pilot.
All six were tragically killed when the aircraft plunged into the water.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said the children were aged four, eight and 10-years-old.
The eight-year-old would have turned nine on Friday.
He said the dad, Agustin Escobar, was in the New York area on business and his family flew into to extend the trip a few days.
“It came down and landed on the Hudson, but upside down, and it’s quite shallow there,” Bray explained.
“So the skids which normally be underneath the fuselage are actually poking up above the water.”
The Bell 206L-4 LongRanger IV departed from a downtown Manhattan helipad around 3pm Thursday.
It followed a popular sightseeing route along the Hudson, which includes flying past the iconic Statue of Liberty.
But the chopper turned south near the George Washington Bridge and crashed just minutes later.
Emergency teams rushed to the scene, launching divers from a nearby operations base — but the mission quickly turned from rescue to recovery after all onboard died in the crash.
Bray said the helicopter was “a fairly new one” and part of a widely used fleet.
“It’s a very popular helicopter. All the television companies use them for their news helicopters, and the police use them as well.”
What is a ‘Jesus nut’?
IN helicopter engineering, the “Jesus nut” is a slang term for the main rotor retaining bolt – the single critical component that secures the rotor blades to the mast.
If this nut fails mid-flight, the rotor can detach, leading to catastrophic consequences.
The term is believed to have originated during the Vietnam War, reflecting the dire situation a crew would face if the nut failed: their only recourse would be to “pray to Jesus.”
The Jesus nut is meticulously inspected before every flight, and failures are exceedingly rare.
However, its importance cannot be overstated; it’s a single point of failure that holds the entire rotor system in place.
In broader engineering contexts, “Jesus nut” has come to describe any component whose failure would result in the total collapse of a system.
But he warned: “We particularly need to know why this one happened, because there’s nobody else involved, as far as we can see.”
The aviation expert went on to urge investigators to examine the aircraft’s maintenance logs and speak to the Director of Maintenance immediately.
“Check that it has been properly maintained… also have a look at the weather conditions, because I understood that when they took off it was clear… but suddenly the fog, the mist, the haze came over and at one point there was some snow,” Bray said.
He added: “The engine was definitely running… In the videos, we’ve seen the rotor still spinning away from the helicopter. So it could be a maintenance issue. It could be a design fault.
“It’s very sad. Lots of people do this. It doesn’t happen that often… But this time, something critical went wrong.”
The tour firm behind the horror crash has a chilling history of sky-high close calls.
New York Helicopter Charter has been involved in multiple terrifying incidents in the past 12 years – including another crash in the same river.
Meanwhile, the family killed in the sightseeing trip reportedly booked the doomed helicopter to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays.
