Jane Dornacker (October 1, 1947 – October 22, 1986) was an American rock musician, actress, and comedienne turned traffic reporter. In 1986, while working for WNBC 660 AM Radio in New York City (which became WFAN in 1988), Dornacker was aboard during two unrelated crashes of the helicopters leased to WNBC. She survived the first crash, but was killed in the second crash into the Hudson River, which occurred as she was in the middle of a live traffic report. Her death came shortly after that of her husband, Bob Knickerbocker, orphaning their 16-year-old daughter. The NTSB investigation determined the cause of the fatal crash to have been use of improper parts and poor maintenance on the part of Spectrum Helicopters of Ridgefield Park, New Jersey A traffic news reporter died after her helicopter crashed in the Hudson River just off 45th Street yesterday while she was broadcasting. The reporter, Jane Dornacker, 40 years old, of WNBC radio, was pulled unconscious from the water and was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where she died 3 1/2 hours later, officals there said. The pilot William Pate, 30, was in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital. This was the second helicopter crash involving Ms. Dornacker this year. After the first, April 18 in the Hackensack River, she swam to safety. 'Hit the Water! Hit the Water!' Yesterday, Ms. Dornacker was making a regular afternoon traffic report when the crash occurred. ''New Jersey, the outbound Lincoln Tunnel looks a lot better for you,'' she began to say at 4:46 P.M. ''In New Jersey,'' she continued, then paused. Suddenly, the radio audience heard: ''Hit the water! Hit the water! Hit the water!'' Two witnesses to the crash, Steve Leibowitz and his sister, Sandy Corbet, said the helicopter approached the shoreline from the west. The two were riding bicycles on a sidewalk that parallels the West Side Highway. 'Like a Nose Dive' At first, the aircraft hovered above the highway, they said. Then ''his engine stopped,'' Ms. Corbet said. ''He went down real fast. It wasn't like a nose dive or a tail dive. The blade stopped and it went down horizontally.'' The tail knocked a hole in a fence at the water's edge when the body of the craft hit the river. When the aircraft hit the surface, Mr. Leibowitz said, ''there was a mechanical noise like a grinding.'' The craft's floats apparently broke off at impact. One of the first rescuers to arrive at the scene was Paul Hashagen, a firefighter and scuba diver with Rescue Squad 1. He said the squad received a report of the crash about a minute after it happened and arrived two minutes later. The aircraft was 20 feet under water lying on its side, he said. He broke a side window and pulled the pilot to the surface. Then he returned for Ms. Dornacker. Neither of the victims was breathing when they reached the surface, he said. A spokesman for St. Vincent's, Caroline McBride, said Ms. Dornacker arrived ''in cardiac arrest with no evidence of brain activity despite all efforts of resuscitation at the scene of the accident and in the mobile intensive care unit along the way to the hospital.'' The preliminary finding of the cause of death was drowning, she said. Pilot Undergoes Surgery Doctors at Bellevue performed exploratory surgery on Mr. Pate to determine if he had suffered internal abdominal injuries, a spokesman said. An Army Corps of Engineers barge lifted the helicopter out of the water between 7:15 and 7:30 P.M. Its rear rotor was missing and the tip of the tail was nearly broken off and remained attached to the bulk of the craft on the right side. The helicopter, a rebuilt Enstrom three-seater, was operated by Spectrum Helicopter of Ridgefield Park, N.J., according to WNBC executives. A man who answered the telephone at the company's New Jersey offices, Joel Kay, said company executives were unavailable for comment. Mr. Kay, who said he worked for Spectrum's advertising agency but refused to identify it, denied that the company owned the helicopter. ''I believe it is owned by an individual who bases it at Spectrum,'' Mr. Kay said. But he added that he did not know the owner's name. Line Had Been Grounded In March of last year, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the emergency grounding of Spectrum craft after citing numerous violations of safety rules. The agency said the maintenance director had put ''false and fictitious information'' in company records to ''falsely indicate'' that Spectrum had performed annual inspections and complied with mandatory F.A.A. directives on the airworthiness of aircraft. At the time, the company challenged the order. On June 25, a Spectrum helicopter ditched in the Hudson after winds blew it off course and the pilot decided to land in the water rather than crash into a parked aircraft at a heliport at 30th Street. Neither the pilot nor passenger suffered serious injury. Ms. Campbell said Ms. Dornacker had been in a helicopter that crashed in the Hackensack River just after takeoff. That day, however, she and the pilot, Bob Banes, swam to safety, Ms. Campbell said. The aircraft in that crash was also rented from Spectrum, a company the station uses regularly, Ms. Campbell said. After the accident in April, Ms. Dornacker did not fly for a month or two. ''I don't think she really wanted to go up,'' said Chris Doyle, producer of an afternoon music and comedy radio program. ''Eventually, in June or July, she did.'' Host of Show Reacts At the time of the crash yesterday, the program's host, Joey Reynolds, listened in the studio as Ms. Dornacker yelled into her microphone. ''It was pretty frightening,'' said Mr. Doyle, the producer. ''We didn't know what to do.'' Mr. Doyle grabbed a tape cartridge with recorded music and played it on the air. Mr. Reynolds said that when he first heard Ms. Dornacker's distress call, he thought she might be kidding. But then, he said, he was struck by the ''distress in her voice'' and ''she went into this pause.'' ''She doesn't ever pause,'' he continued. ''You can't get a word in there with a crowbar. I wondered what's the pause and a shiver went up my spine.'' The National Weather Service said the sky was clear, with seven miles visibility and southerly winds of 12 miles an hour. Ms. Dornacker lived in Manhattan. Born in Albuquerque, N.M., she went to college in San Francisco and worked as a a mail carrier, comedian, songwriter and actress. She performed in nightclubs and cabarets, and in 1983, played Nurse Murch in the film ''The Right Stuff.'' Ms. Campbell said. According to a resume, Ms. Dornacker was a songwriter for the rock band ''The Tubes'' from 1976 to 1980, for whom m she co-wrote ''Don't Touch Me There'' and ''Cathy's Clone.'' Later she was a traffic reporter at radio station KFRC in San Francisco until November 1985, when she joined WNBC. Ms. Dornacker was divorced, Ms. Campbell said, and the mother of a 17-year-old daughter, Naomi Knickerbocker Dornacker, a high school student in San Francisco. Dr. Steven Sparr, a physician who is a friend of Ms. Dornacker's, said last night that she had attended San Francisco State College where she was the 1965 Homecoming Queen on the ''Earth Mother'' ticket. ''After the first accident she was afraid of going up again but she knew she had to do it,'' Dr. Sparr said. ''She also said when she first went up flying, that it was kind of scary, but she really felt it was kind of beautiful driving along the Hudson at sunset.''