Fast news day.....

[Sonny]

so is this considered an accident? i havent been able to watch the news in the last couple days.

Sounds like it.

[laxfan25]

I was watching CNN this morning, and they said that something seriously wrong would have had to happen because the plane they were flying was relatively new (that model has been around for 10 years) and it had all the modern safety features including a parachute for the plane. It's actually a handle that the pilot or any passenger can pull that deploys a parachute for the entire plane out the top.

It's worked successfullly 9 times. The most recent happened when the pilot suffered a stroke on takeoff. The passenger pulled it, and everyone survived.

I didn't realize that the plane was from Cirrus Designs. When I lived in Minnesota the owner of my company was a big investor in that firm, he thought the parachute recovery system would make it a huge seller. Here's a link to their website, and you can see a video of the parachute system in action.
http://www.cirrusdesign.com/

[Brent Burns]

The link below is written by Mark Newman for MLB.com, and his title is "Baseball forced to recall past tragedies."

It has been nearly 30 years since the last New York Yankee died in a plane crash, and that was Thurman Munson.

http://www.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/emailArticleServlet?aid=1202275

That article also listed Roberto Clemente and other MLB players who died in plane crashes.

Last night, I caught a little bit of SportsCenter, and they did a story on Munson.

[ZagGrad]

I was thinking about this yesterday with this whole thing and how it was on 10/11/06. Then, it was brought to my attention that if you flip the numbers, you get 90/11/01...or 9/11/01...weird.

[beckner11]

you get 90/11/01...or 9/11/01...weird.

Actually...90/11/01 isn't the same as 9/11/01 it would have to be 09 instead of 90.

[Jolly Roger]

Actually...90/11/01 isn't the same as 9/11/01 it would have to be 09 instead of 90.

Firm grasp of the obvious...

[mbuff]

I talked with my co-worker whose husband used to fly visually as well as with instruments. She told me that his flight plan can be easily tracked on the radar. They would be able to find his flight plan. I read that one witness saw the plane leaving Laguardia Airport. I wonder if our resident aviation "expert", mbuff would chime in and explain how finding out who flew the plane works, etc.

General aviation (GA) A/C don't use Laguardia (LGA). Teterboro (TEB) is used for most of the NYC/NJ area GenAv A/C. It's the busiest GA airport in the US. Since they were visual flight rules (VFR) they may or may not have filed a flight plan. If they did file, then it is usually the departure point, route, arrival point and that could be as general as TEB-LOCAL-TEB. In other words, we're tooling around the area.

Radar: You are not tracked on radar unless you file an instrument flight plan. VFR A/C do appear on radar as targets but are not identified per-se unless they contact ATC and request flight following and that is granted as workload permits. I highly doubt in the NYC area, with the high traffic, that controllers are going to FF a local flight. Transponder equipped A/C that are VFR may be required to squawk a certain code depending on the airspace they are operating within at the time. There is a lot of Class B airspace around NYC because of JFK, LGA, and EWR basically surround Manhattan. That airspace is restricted like an upsidedown wedding cake. VFR A/C cannot enter Class B airspace (surface to 10,000') unless transponder equipped and have 2-way communication with ATC.

Airspace: With Manhattan in the middle, you have LGA to the northeast, JFK to the southeast, EWR to the southwest, and TEB to the northwest. All of these airports are within about a 15mile radius of Manhattan. Plus there's a big heliport down in Manhattan. Lot of traffic for someone from with not a lot of time in that type of A/C to deal with while training.

Information: I checked the NTSB database & the preliminary is not even on the board yet. If you go to http://www.landings.com they aggregate databases and you can find out registration infromation if you know the N-number, pilot cert's if you know the name. His plane is probably registered to a LLP or corp. for tax purposes but it's not registered under his given name.

Investigation: This is going to be a good one. The Cirrus is a CRT/glass cockpit so the usual stuff is not going to be there, phosphorous on the glass bezels of analogue instrumentation, filaments from warning lights, etc. I know how to tell if a recip engine was under power from the way the blades are bent if the plane impacts the ground in a glide but I have no clue as to how they should look if you smack into a building and then fall to the ground. Maybe the NTSB can pull out a drive or RAM chip that has instrument data written to it, I don't know. From the fireball that I saw on the USCG video, there was plenty of fuel in that A/C. The mayday call is suspect also. If there was a call, it should turn up either on a tape or with another pilot(s) confirming that they heard it.

small aircraft will get caught up in the jetwash from wingtip vortices from larger aircraft, causing it to lose control. He said that typically they will not send up a small aircraft until 10 minutes later when the jetwash has cleared.

This is just wrong information. Wingtip vortices from large aircraft produce Wake Turbulence and that turbulence begins when the A/C rotates on TO. ATC does not hold GA for any time limit when a small is behind a Heavy. You just say "N355 Caution wake turbulence departing 757 heavy, wind 275 at 12, cleared for takeoff". It's up to the pilot to avoid the turbulence and the way you do that is to rotate before the heavy did and to alter you departure path upwind a little since the vorticies sink. A heavy jet requires much more runway than a SR20 so if the 757 rotates at 9500' down the runway and the SR20 rotates in 1500', the SR20 is going to miss the turbulence. To land behind a Heavy, you touch down at a point further down the runway than the Heavy touched down. At the altitude the Cirrus was flying, he's not going to catch any turbulence by any Heavy A/C because he was well below all of that traffic. And we do know that the Cirrus departed TEB which has no Part 121 carriers and I don't think they allow turbojet A/C because of noise abatement issues. Seriously, the only time I remember ever holding any A/C for 10 minutes was practicing non-radar IFR procedures (Oh sh*t, we just lost power!)

My 2cents on what I know thus far.

[ZagGrad]

Perhaps there were some vortices caused by the fluid flow around the structures? Might be worth the look, but doubtful that was the cause...

I only design the material that stops the plane, not help it fly.

[Brent Burns]

Just saw this one from Yahoo! which got this multimedia from New York Times.

Small Airplane Hits Building in Manhattan

I would guess that the graphics that you will see is probably a guesstimate of how the plane left the airport in New Jersey, etc. It is interesting to see the end of the graphic to see what the layout is like inside that building.