Major important Breaking news.

[Alan Wheeler]

I have just heard, via some contacts, that an Aircraft of somekind has just crashed in some high price apartment blocks in NY. I think it is Downtown. The address is 544E22nd Street if that is anygood to anybody. It has just happend as in 3:16PM NY time. I don't think the news agtnecies have gotten hold of it yet.
Not saying it is terrorist, no one know's anything other than it is some aircraft of some type, and no aircraft should be in that vacinity.
would love to hear news from you fold over there as it comes to hand.

[defjef]

the address is wrong

It is on 72nd street

[delmarrey]

So far the fire is out. Is was a small 4 passenger plane. Wittnesses say the plane was doing dips and rolls over the river. Wittness also say it looked as the plane slowed down and may have stalled. Which is the possible reason for the accident.

[delmarrey]

it turns out to be a Yankees picther Cory Lidle, a new pilot, who had owned the plane for only a couple months.

A tragic event

[Alan Wheeler]

Bad news, but Good news I suppose.

[defjef]

He was an inexperienced pilot with something like 70 hrs... and a new plane. Does it seem insane to pilot a plane up the east river with all sorts of odd winds at low altitudes from the effects of tall structures? He was supposedly flying at 700 feet barely higher than many of the sky scrapers. Not too many places to ditch a plane in NYC. Eh?

Jef
sv Shiva
Contest 36s

[hellosailor]

A lot of disinformation and panic surrounded the events, I happened to catch almost all of it on the Network Nooze as well as on the NYFD radio, where there was less speculation.

East 72nd street runs out to the East River. (Most of the early news said Hudson, that's a different river on the west side.)

Aircraft are allowed to fly in a limited "exclusion zone" over the East River, IIRC they quoted 800 or 1000 feet up to 1500 feet, from that area south. This is a "wedge" of airspace used mainly for sightseeing, below the approach patterns and below the radar for LGA and therefore "free" from conflicting the LGA traffic which is in the surrounding area.

"Wittnesses say the plane was doing dips and rolls over the river. " Yeah, they also saw a helicopter fly into the building. So much for witnesses, that's very definitely NOT an area for aerobatics, although I'd believe he was flying erratically because of a hardware failure. There were initial reports he did not have any radio contact, then a fast late report last night that he DID place a Mayday call.

The early speculation is that whoever was flying (presumably a rusty Lidle being supervised by the instructor onboard) made a hard turn to port at the north end of the exclusion zone, intending to return back south down the East River, when something went wrong. If his turn was not hard enough, that building would have been the first high-rise he would have hit.

There is also some question about how high he was flying, that building numbers their floors in some peculiar way so he apparently hit the 30th to 31st floor, even though the apartments on those floors are being called 40th and 41st floor. 30 floors would put the impact point at about 300-325 feet above sea level there. IOW, he was well under the legal height, which his instructor should have been very aware of.

From the first video (minutes after the impact) it was clearly a *light* aircraft hit, but most of the media shamelessy pandered to fear by repeating "at least, we don't think it is a terrorist attack" when the only significant damage was--literally--broken windows and a hot fuel fire in two or three apartments. The outer wall of the building was completely intact, and that was clear on the live video.

NYFD responded almost casually, building up to four alarms over the first half hour or so. Considering the building's size, I was surprised they didn't call it out as multiple alarms to start with, but they were right about it being, essentially, a large kitchen fire nicely contained by a modern building.

Aircraft crashes in NYC, home to two major airports (three if we annex Newark, as often reported) and a host of commuter airports, are pretty much a routine part of life. (Wheels, light aircraft are all over NYC, 24x7. There are also heliports and seaplanes active on the East River just a little further south, all the time.)

But really great business for the Nightly Nooze. (sigh) That got hours and hours out of what was essentially just another car crash in the sky.