In the conspiracy theory department, it seems Mets third base coach Manny Acta lived in that condo, though no word yet on whether his was one of the condos destroyed by the crash.
Sorry. cite.
I’m a recently licensed pilot (just got my shiny new license in the mail last week!). When the plane in KY flew off the runway, it affected me in the sense that I was curious what went wrong.
Once I found out that this was a small plane with another recently licensed pilot, I took a much bigger interest in this story. I’m not sure exactly why, but I suspect its because its the first accident I’ve heard of where the pilot who was killed is fairly similar to me, in terms of flying experience. (I have just over 100 compared to his reported 90 or so). It might be that it hits the ‘it really could happen to me’ bone a little harder.
Thanks for the in depth explanation of things, Broomstick. Many of the things you mentioned are thoughts I had myself (the weather was marginal, the altitude was too low to have any margin of error, combination of relatively new pilot and a plane that is new to him spells trouble), and I’m glad that someone shared them. The information coming from the media during these kinds of things can be so misleading that its frustrating. They sometimes make it sound like it was the failure to file a flight plan that caused the crash.
Its these sort of things that motivate to me to go to the safety seminars and pay the $$ to get adequate hours in a new plane before soloing in it (even if its going from a 172 R model to an S model).
What runway was he looking for???
I would think that aiming towards Roosevelt Island would be wiser than navigating the tall buildings on Manhattan.
He might not have been looking for a runway. He was approaching the LaGuardia Airport exclusion zone (which begins at the northern end of Roosevelt Island), and may have simply been trying to turn around. The East River is a narrow flight corridor, and pilot error due to decreased visibility may have put him over Manhattan, where he should not have been.
Apparently the Mets team doctor lives there also, and two Cardinals pitchers have had consultations with him in the last couple of months.
Yes, it’s true.
Johnny answered this already, but I’ll add a bit.
“Flight plan” is one of those terms that means one thing to the general public and has a very specific meaning to pilots. I “plan” every flight, but I don’t file a flight plan for every flight. Actually, for very few of them.
First question - what’s a flight plan in the aviation sense of the word, and what’s it for? For instrument-flying pilots, it is a concise description of their intended route of travel and filing gives them a slot/reservation/attention in the air traffic control system. In the event of a crash, it also gives the search and rescue crews a place to start.
Now, for visual flight pilots things are a little different. For one thing, they don’t need a “slot” in the air traffic system. In fact, it’s entirely possible to fly outside the air traffic system which is NOT, and never has been, designed for security but rather traffic control (duh!). The airspace around major hubs is like an extremely busy downtown city intersection which requires a great deal of signs, lights, and perhaps a traffic cop or three to maintain safe traffic flow. Out in the sticks, road intersections may not even have a stop sign because there is so little traffic it’s just not needed. Likewise, in remote/little used airspace there is no need for traffic control services. VFR pilots need to talk to air traffic control when using airport with control towers, and in very busy areas they might need permission to enter certain areas, but something like 98% of the airspace in North America you can fly through VFR without talking to anyone.
For VFR pilots, a flight plan provides search and rescue people with a place to start looking should you fail to arrive or scream “MAYDAY!” prior to falling silent. That’s it. It’s an insurance plan. And most useful when flying from point A to point B.
But I don’t always fly from point A to point B. If I’m just doing laps around an airport practicing take-offs and landings it’s sort of pointless to file a flight plan - I’m not going anywhere, and if I crash at an airport someone is going to notice, right? Particularly in the middle of the afternoon of a nice day. And yes, pilots do practice take-offs and landings like that. If I’m taking the spouse or friends up for a sight-seeing flight within, say, 25 miles of my home base – well, again, I’m not going anywhere, I’m taking off and landing at the same place, if I crash it’s urban enough someone will notice and call 911…
The only time a VFR pilot MUST file a flight plan is when crossing an international border.
Mind you - VFR pilots are welcome to file flight plans. In some cases, such as taking off from an airport late at night or before dawn when there are few people around they might contact air traffic control by phone and say “If I don’t contact you by radio by XXX time send help to airport ABC”. They just don’t have to. And frequently, we don’t.
Another car analogy - if I’m taking a long road trip, over hundreds of miles and taking many hours, maybe even several days, I’ll tell someone when I’m leaving, when I expect to arrive, and my planned route so if I don’t report in someone will start looking for me. But I don’t take those precautions when driving to the grocery store 10 minutes away.
Well, for one thing, you’d have to do it without anyone else noticing. If someone loaded a couple hundred pounds of ANYTHING into a small airplane (other than passengers), or a half-dozen duffle bags or bunch of crates they’d attract attention. Really. Because loading up a small plane that heavily leaves serious questions about weight and balance loading. Put too much weight in an airplane, or balance the load wrong, you can crash and die. No one wants to see that. So if someone started loading a plane heavily someone is likely to come up and say “Hey, buddy, you sure you’re within weight limits? You need help with that?”
I suppose you could load in a closed hangar, but most people open the big doors when getting ready. Again, it would look odd to have a lot of stuff going into a closed hangar and the Bad Guys would risk unwanted attention.
Then there are all the other reasons already given, about small planes not being efficient delivery vehicles and all that, having small payloads, and so forth.
But let’s say, just for an argument, that a Bad Guy DID load up a small airplane. Well, other pilots are going to notice that the airplane is heavily loaded - it will take significantly longer to accelerate to take off, use up a lot of runway, climb very slowly… and if there’s only one guy in such a heavily loaded airplane again, it’s going to attract attention. And these days, odds are someone is going to call the toll free number displayed all over the place these days at small airports and on website and flyers and tell DHS and/or FBI.
Does it work? Well, there’s been more than one group of reporters who have tried various things to “prove” there’s no security at small airports and so far the pilots and employees have noticed something suspicious and called the hotline and the authorities have shown up and made arrests.
Remember that effective security is not always obvious.
I hear people suggest tall fences around airports. Well, you know, fences don’t stop airplanes. Why? Because airplanes fly. Yes, I know, that’s obvious but apparently it needs repeating. Yes, a fence CAN keep people out of an area, but fences can be breached and if they are long it can be expensive or nearly impossible to guarantee integrity. What you really need to do is to MAKE SURE no unauthorized person or Bad Guy gets ahold of the airplane itself. So… what you need to do, more than fencing in the airport grounds, is secure the airplane. That means don’t leave the key in the plane, lock the door of the airplane, lock the plane in a hangar, use prop locks (they render the airplane completely unusable if you try to start the engine with them in place), and so one. Spend the money on security the hardware, not the real estate. For a time after 9/11 crop dusters - the airplanes that ARE designed to disperse chemicals - not only were locked down but owners were doing things like pulling the spark plugs and starter batteries after the workday and locking those bits up in a separate building. All of which is simple, relatively inexpensve, but also quite effective at making it very difficult to start the airplane.
Another thing, which has almost always been the case, is that if you go even to a small, remote airport someone shows up (you made some noise to get there, after all) and says hello. Since 9/11, airport staff make a point of doing this and asking you what you’re up to. Now, this isn’t some nasty official thing or a third degree, it’s pretty friendly, but if someone acted hostile or evasive or strange yeah, someone will say something. These places are not as unobserved as outsiders think they are. Security doesn’t always come in a uniform.
What sort of security should there be? EFFECTIVE security. Which isn’t always security that “looks like” security, or costs a lot of money, or involves high tech stuff.
I would think having God sitting on your shoulder would make getting out of the room a lot more difficult . . .
So the apartment isn’t open?
Damn it.
Thanks for the insights Johnny and Broomstick. Johnny, hope you get to fly again soon, and Broomstick, I’m someone who always reads your flying stories, I appreciate the detail you provide.
Author Carol Higgins Clark lives on the 38th floor of the Belaire. 2 floors below where the plane crashed.
Guess this is the place to get my WAG about the cause “on the record.” That plane, according to the company web site, has a normally aspirated engine, meaning it has a carburetor. I’m wondering if the carburetor iced up. That fits with the reports of engine trouble. Anyone know what the temperature was in NYC that afternoon? (Note: since the design of carburetors cools down the air passing through it by several degrees, the ambient air temperature can be [and usually is] several degrees above freezing when ice forms. I hope someone who is up-to-date on the problem weighs in - it’s been 25 years since I’ve read about carburetor icing.)
Wednesday in Manhattan had a high of 63° and a low of 59°.
It does not look like a freezing problem. My WAG, inexperience pilot flying the East River on a Windy day, I think he could not adjust for an unexpected strong gust from the canyons of Manhattan.
Jim
Thanks for the data. Sixty is probably too warm for carburetor icing, but I just don’t remember the details. The dreary weather at the time in NYC, and the cool temps here in the Midwest, made me think of that possibility.
The Cirrus is a fairly up to date airplane - I doubt that it uses a carburator. I fly 172R’s, which are normally aspirated but have a fuel injector. I’m going to guess that a recently made plane like a Cirrus has a fuel injector as well.
But if it did have a carburator - I suppose that could be a possibility. Even at the temps that What Exit? stated - 63 degrees for a high and 59 for a low. It has more to do with temperature and dew point spread, moreso then actual outside temperature. The written exam always usually has the question of whether its possible to have carb icing at 70F, and the answer is yes.
Yes, you can have carb ice up to 70F. But also, most of the new airplanes have fuel injection, not carbeurators, even if they are “normally aspirated”. In fact, some of the older planes have been retro-fitted with fuel injection. I’d be really surprised if a Cirrus had a carb.
I don’t think it’s a wind problem, either - but I’ll weigh in later.
According to the Daily News the woman who owned the apartment the plane smashed into was in a coma for two weeks in 1997, after a runaway balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade struck a lamppost and knocked off a piece that struck her on the head.
I know New Yorkers take a perverse pride in dealing with the unique problems they face living there, but I think this woman is just plain unlucky.
Or very lucky. She wasn’t killed by either the ballon or the airplane.
Could be worse (he said, waiting for someone to quote Marty Feldman).
I occurs to me that the Yankees do not have good luck with airplanes. First Thurman Munson then Cory Lidle. In 2001, Enrique Wilson planned on taking American Airlines Flight 587 home if the Yankees won the World Series (fortunately for him, they did not). And today, Alex Rodriguez’s plane ran off the runway (he’s fine). I suppose you could say those last two were lucky, but if I see a Yankee on a plane, I might think twice about staying (not just because I’m a Red Sox fan).
Okay. It looks like my haste and foggy memory led me astray. The Cirrus web page said it had a “normally aspirated engine” and I stopped reading there. In re-reading it now I see:
:smack:
Didn’t help that I thought “normally aspirated” meant “carbureted”. I think it actually means “non-turbocharged” (you’ll understand if I swear off swearing to facts for the rest of this thread).
I notice in today’s paper that the flight instructor aboard was from California and apparently not familiar with the area. Kinda sounds like a couple of rubberneckers forgot that they were supposed to be operating an aircraft.