http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6042306.stm

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-11T190638Z_01_N11295580_RTRUKOC_0_UK-CRASH-PLANE.xml
Not terrorism related, say govt

Phew.

As it turns out, it was a helicopter.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=4649965
The FDNY has confirmed that a helicopter flying in an exclusion airspace crashed into an Upper East Side building Wednesday afternoon. A spokesperson for the FBI says there is no indication of terrorism in the crash.

Several windows of an apartment were blown out in an apartment building at the Belaire building on 524 East 72nd Street, between York and East End Avenue.
An eyewitness who saw the crash said she saw a "huge fireball." Another eyewitness told reporter Dave Evans that he was walking, heard a crash and a crunching sound and then saw smoke.

Sandy Teller,eyewitness: "It's a mob scene with police and helicopters circling. ... There's a dozen ambulances and lots of firemen waiting on 72nd, on the corner. There's lots of stretchers ready, gurneys. And lots of emergency people waiting."

Eyewitness News' Shannon Sohn was in Newscopter 7, watching the raging fire that sent a pillar of black smoke over the city. There was no immediate word on any deaths or injuries.

I can tell you that here in NYC the attitude is like, "not again". The East River area is always crowded with helicopter tours. It's a small wonder this type of thing doesn't happen more often. But then again, York Ave is about as far east on Manahttan Island as you can get. Makes you wonder why the pilot didn't attempt to crash land in the East River.

Wierd story. It reminds me of the initial reports on Sept 11, they thought it was a small plane. Some kind of accident. Then the second plane hit....

I'll be anxious to see who the pilot was and how this story develops. Hopefully, this time there will be no second plane.

The BBC are currently saying it was a small plane:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6042306.stm
Also, Manhattan is supposedly a no-fly zone, and fighters have been scrambled just in case, over "several" cities.

If Mahattan is a No-Fly Zone, someone forget to tell the hundreds of helicopter, small planes and large jets landing at LGA that.

I see it's no longer a helicopter.

Police have confirmed two deaths in what the FAA is calling a small fixed-wing aircraft crash into an Upper East Side building Wednesday afternoon.

An FBI spokesperson, along with the Homeland Security Department, said there was no evidence of a terrorist attack. Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said "The initial indication is that there is a terrible accident." Nonetheless, the Pentagon says they scrambled fighter jets over U.S. cities as a precaution.

Several windows of an apartment were blown out in an apartment building at the Belaire building on 524 East 72nd Street, between York and East End Avenue. The crash triggered a loud bang sending glass and debris around the neighborhood. http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/cms_exf_2005/news/aircraftcrash_101106.jpghttp://a.abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/cms_exf_2005/news/WABC_101106_4pmshots6.jpg

Mayor Bloomberg went to the site, where parts of the fuselage were reportedly falling to the ground.

The FAA has now established a temporary flight restriction, which means no aircraft may fly within one mile radius around or fifteen hundred above the accident scene. Right now, local airports are not affected by the crash.

The FAA has said that it was a fixed wing craft. They emphasised that point on Sky News 24 earlier
They also said that 2 people were killed and others trapped in the building.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/communisthamster/genImage.jpg

Looks like a pretty clean gash on the building, as if the plane was level.

Not that I'm suggesting it's any kind of terrorist thing - I mean, why bother with a tiny plane and a block of flats.

Interesting though.

Sucks for whoevers place that is.

Sucks for whoevers place that is.
No kidding.

Plot twist:

Yankees Pitcher Cory Lidle Was Killed in the Plane Crash, High-Ranking City Official Says

Seems a New York Yankess pitcher was flying the plane. Man, so you don't make the playoffs one year!!!:eek:

- ESPN has confirmed that Yankees Pitcher Cory Lidle has been killed in the aircraft crash on the Upper East Side on Wednesday afternoon. The NYC Medical Examiner's office has confirmed four deaths in all as a result of the crash.

The Port Authority says the aircraft took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=4649965

I retract my post.

That's quite an interesting spin to the story, especially if it turns out to be a suicide.

Apparently the plane was doing acrobats before the crash? Drunk?

Sucks for whoevers place that is.


Those apartments sell for over a million U.S.

Apparently the plane was doing acrobats before the crash? Drunk?


Malfunction? Medical emergency? Aliens?

Illuminati!

(sorry I started it... back on track, please.)

It was orchestrated by the REpublicans to divert attention from their child predator Congessmen and failed North Korea policy!!!!:eek:

And a NY Yankee died in the crash. All that tax revenue gone.....

I'll toss in my 2 cents, since I have flown NY's Hudson VFR Corridor quite a lot. I never ventured up the East River cul-de-sac, because it was constricted for a U-turn, and because without the U-turn one had to proceed North talking to LaGuardia Tower on short notice, which was a workload-permitting deal on their part. I left that small aerial backstreet to the helicopters. But I loved the Hudson Corridor, which I fear is now politically doomed.

The VFR corridor was not only a stunning air tour, but also greatly increased the amount of light-aircraft traffic that could traverse the Northeast coast. For a very defined visual route, it relieved controllers from the tedium of separating traffic that more efficiently did so cooperatively on a common radio frequency. In a way it was futuristic, because it embodied a "highway in the sky", or autonomous control that the FAA is planning in order to relieve our overburdened Air Traffic Control System.

The NY metro area is surrounded by rather geometricly-complex airspace, roughly an immense upside-down wedding cake, configured in 23-mile radii from Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK airports. This generally mandates the use of radio arbiters or Air Traffic Controllers- some of the most busy controllers in the world. But if you wanted to transition through under visual flight rules (decent weather), you could basically follow the Hudson, keeping right for traffic, at 1,000 feet, staying above the river and keeping right while your requisite transponder broadcasts your position, track and speed to the world.

Along the way, pilots would announce their aircraft types, positions, and direction of travel using a series of landmarks. North-South, these were the Tappan-Zee Bridge, the Alpine Tower, the GW Bridge, the Intrepid, the Holland Tunnel (cooling towers) "The Lady" (Liberty), and the Verrazano. What this meant was that if you werre a pilot listening on the frequency, you would quickly get an even clearer picture of everything going on than you can, for instance, communicating with Air Traffic control in their controlled airspace. It really did work very well. I instructed quite a lot of pilots in flying the Hudson VFR Corridor safely and without stress, even in formation upon occasion.

Whatever we do as pilots, there are a couple of cardinal rules.

#1 is always fly the airplane. Whatever is vying for your attention, a competent pilot always stays aware of how the airplane is flying, and what the near-term flight path is. Part of this is maintaining airspeed, and looking where you are going. Any good driver understands the looking where you are going part. Any waterskiier understands the speed part: Not enough speed = loss of control, deferring control to gravity and ballistic momentum.

#2 is always have an out. Whenever entering a more challenging than normal situation, a prudent pilot always mentally reviews a few likely "what-if: scenarios. In the case of the Corridor, I have for many years reviewed with my students ditching procedures (the river is generally the best option if the airplane is becoming unflyable) and also the opposite type of escape maneuver: Climbing up into controlled airspace and advising the controllers if things suddenly get too busy.

My hunches are often right early in the investigations of light airplane accidents, so I'm not uncomfortable sharing mine in this case. Lidle and Stanger (the owner and his instructor) got in over their heads, because they did not anticipate how they could run out of space and ideas in that corridor, and did not think through the best responses in advance, should things suddenly get busy. Compounding their bad decision-making was the fact that the weather was low. This means that bugging out into a climb would be complicated by the fact that instrument (cloudy weather) flight procedures would be in effect shortly after initiating such a climb. They had boxed themselves in as far as up the East River corridor as they could get, and during a harried U-turn, traffic and airspace stress caused them to get distracted and "drop the airplane".

When an airplane is flying slowly, control is more sluggish. There's different control feedback, and especially in a hard turn, ther is only so much you can ask of an airplane. The SR-22 is not a great maneuverer. To me, it's a bit of a barge. But put any airplane in too hard of a turn at too low of an airspeed, and the result is what is called an accelerated stall. Airflow separates over the wings, resulting most typically in a sudden roll in the direction opposite the turn, with a simultaneous nose-down pitching motion. With a relaxed and well-trained pilot, the SR-22 needs about 500' of altitude and about 1500' forward and laterally to recover. Should a tense and distracted pilot just pull on the contol stick in panic, the airplane just doesn't go where he might expect. It continues rolling and diving. This is a lot like becoming panicked in a car, locking up your brakes, and spinning the steering wheel abruptly- Just like rubber losing its grip on pavement, the wings of an airplane let go of the sky in a situation when the operator manipulates the controls that badly.

Does this mean that airplanes are deathtraps, and should not be operated by everyday folks in close vicinity to Manhattan? Absolutely not. Similar panic kills tens of thousands of Americans annually in their cars. But since most Americans are well familiar with cars and driver error, there is seldom an outcry for the banning of private cars in the vicinity of sidewalks and buildings. Nor is it commonplace after a fatal car accident for the national guard to be called out for armed patrol of closed streets. Yet that is precisely what is the case here: Because of poor pilot judgement and flying technique on the part of only 2 among half a million or so active American pilots, we have all lost just a little bit more freedom. For me, it was a particularly special freedom.

I'll never forget the sights of Manhattan from its absolutely most eyepoppingly-gorgeous vantage point, glamorous by day, and the most dazzling array of jewels unseen anywhere else by night. I'll never forget the friendly chatter over the radio, an impromptu community of aviators saluting each other in passing. I'll never forget this country that was once a little more free, and a little less paranoid. I'm suddenly left making my last Hudson River callout right here:

"Zlin passing the Lady Southbound, and thanks for the memories."