New York Yankee pitcher crashes plane into NYC skyline

I was quite shocked when I heard the news that another plane had found it's way into the Manhattan skyline in New York. I quickly turned on CNN and was greeted with the latest news of the time reporting that a small aircraft had crashed into a 50 story residential building in New York. CNN news article here

It was later discovered that the pilot was New York Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle, flying in his new Cirrus SR20 aircraft.

The plane is a state of the art machine which has just as many bells and whistles as the business aircraft that I fly! I've seen a few of them around and have always admired them. With a sticker price though of nearly double some of the competition it is only available to some fairly wealthy people. Angelina Jolie is another celebrity that has one, and I saw it first hand here in Calgary last year when she flew it up to visit Brad Pitt who was shooting for his new movie The Assassination of Jesse James".

The biggest feature on this aircraft is that it has a ballistic rocket parachute system which can be used if the pilot/plane gets into a bad situation such as a total failure of some systems, or break up of the aircraft, or even if a pilot has gotten himself into some real bad trouble in bad weather (which has occurred before with successful parachute deployments). For some information on the aircraft and it's parachute system you can visit the Cirrus website here: Cirrus Design

So of course the speculation is out as to what could of happened. But weather at the time of the accident wasn't great, and certainly not the best for a fresh new pilot (7 months newly licensed). However, reports are that there was a flight instructor on board as well. So it's anyone's guess as to what was happening at the time of the accident. I wont go into much speculation, but for 2 pilots to get themselves into such trouble as to be in the New York skyline it would have to be something pretty catastrophic. Perhaps failure of the airframe itself.. we really don't know at this time. Just as I type this I can hear on the news, one woman reports not seeing any wings on the plane. Eyewitness reports are pretty sketchy at best, but if what she is saying is correct perhaps there truly was an overstress in the aircraft and the wing(s) did separate from the airframe. That is precisely the reason what this parachute is designed for, however, being this close to the ground it's unlikely that they would have had time to deploy the 'chute. But like I said before, it's all speculation and we can anticipate a more detailed report in the weeks ahead.

I will however go as far to say that this is a dangerous plane for the simple reason that it can give a pilot a false sense of security. That is to say that they might push themselves past their capabilities as a pilot because they feel they have all of these systems to help them along. The plane is an amazing piece of equipment, but the type of people flying it are going to be weekend flyers, that have a significant amount of extra pocket change, so usually only partially experienced flyers that shouldn't be pushing things like weather and other bad flying conditions. So by feeling so safe with all of these systems it gives people a false sense of security which can really get someone into trouble.

When I used to fly traffic reporters around the lower mainland and over downtown Vancouver we used to fly in almost any weather condition. So it really pushed my skills to the limit sometimes, and you have to make the right judgment calls because you don't want to get yourself into a situation where you lose your situational awareness be it because of getting into some clouds or rain showers.. the fact that I was so low to the ground all the time, adds to the equation. If I was flying in a plane like the SR20, there's a chance I might have been tempted to fly it into worse situations than I would have felt comfortable with one of the other aircraft. So it really can happen to anyone. Every pilot needs to be continually aware of their situational awareness and also know their own capabilities and limitations and not push them.

What happened today is not necessarily a direct result of pushing capabilities, we'll have to wait for the NTSB reports or more detailed news before that kind of information can be determined. This aircraft would not have had any "black box" devices on board, so they won't have that information to aid their investigation.

Regardless, a sad day when any aircraft doesn't land safely.