Airplane, Helicopter Collide Over Hudson River

[FSTargetDrone]

AP story on Yahoo:

Small plane, helicopter collide over Hudson River
By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer Verena Dobnik, Associated Press Writer 7 mins ago

NEW YORK – A small plane collided with a tour helicopter carrying about a half-dozen people over the Hudson River on Saturday.

The accident happened just after noon between Manhattan and Hoboken, N.J., and both aircraft crashed into the water. The Coast Guard said one person had been rescued and New York City Fire Department officials on the scene said there appear to have been fatalities.

The plane, a Piper PA-32, took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and the helicopter was a Eurocopter AS 350 owned by Liberty Tours, a sightseeing and charter company, Federal Aviation Administration officials said. Officials don't know how many people were aboard the plane, but FAA spokesman Jim Peters said there may have been five passengers and one crew member aboard the helicopter.

Emergency crews are on both sides of the river and police divers are going into the water.

People who saw the crash and its aftermath described the two aircraft colliding not far from the Hoboken shoreline, and said the impact sheared off the plane's wing.

"There was a loud pop, almost like a car backfire," said Buzz Nahas, who saw the crash from the shore in Hoboken. "The helicopter dropped like a rock. The plane lost its wing."

Katie Tanski, of Hoboken, heard the noise of the collision, looked up and saw chaos in the air.

"We saw the helicopter propellers fly all over," she said. Some pieces of the wreckage fell on land, sending Tanski and others scurrying for cover.

Seven months ago, the same river was the scene of a spectacular aircraft accident. In January, a US Airways flight taking off from LaGuardia Airport slammed into a flock of birds and lost power in both engines. The plane crash-landed in the Hudson River, and all 155 people on board were pulled to safety.

____

Associated Press writer David B. Caruso in New York contributed to this report.

There is some coverage on CNN and FOX, but MSNBC is carrying one of those court/crime documentaries.

[Broomstick]

Bloomberg made a statement on CNN, you can go look at the video there.

The airplane is a PA-32, a six or seven seat "Cherokee" which Bloomberg identified as a "believed to be a Saratoga" which is one variant of the PA-32 (Bloomberg is himself a pilot certified to fly both airplanes and helicopters, so I am inclined to trust what he says in these matters, particularly given his past statements in regards to aircraft problems in NYC). I don't know the model of the helicopter, but it had 6 aboard total. There were three on the airplane. Basically, you're looking at a collision of two flying mini-vans as far as size goes, although the airplane goes about 3-4 times faster than a mini-van. I would also mention that aircraft are not as impact resistant as ground based vehicles, mid-air collisions are a Bad Thing.

Preliminary reports are that the airplane struck the helicopter from behind and slightly above, meaning the helicopter was (if all this is accurate) probably in the airplane's blind spot. Eyewitnesses state that one wing was sliced off the airplane, and pieces were coming off the helicopter as it fell which, along with the trajectory (straight down) would seem to indicate that the rotors failed, possibly shattering as they went through the airplane. VERY preliminary, very much subject to change with more information.

[FSTargetDrone]

VERY preliminary, very much subject to change with more information.

Yeah, this can't be stressed enough. More than once stories have been discussed here where the details change quite a bit.

Some of the witnesses reported that the airplane went into the water before the chopper did. I wonder how soon it will be before video or pictures of this accident will be found? There are also reports that some debris was found on the grounds of a nearby college.

Anyway, the emergency personnel have been in the "recovery" as opposed to "rescue" phase for some time now, as one might expect.

The current count on CNN is 9 confirmed dead. The dead aboard the chopper may have been Italian tourists, making this an international story.

[Broomstick]

The "smoke" coming off the severed wing is actually most likely aviation gasoline dispersing in the air.

[Broomstick]

From the New York Times, edited for brevity and points of interest.

A small private plane carrying three people and a New York tourist helicopter carrying six collided in midair and plunged into the Hudson River off the West Side of Manhattan just before noon on Saturday. At least two people were confirmed dead, the authorities said, and a search was on for the others.

....snip....

The authorities confirmed that two people had died, but did not identify them.

In case anyone is unclear about this American custom, the authorities almost certainly knew the names of the deceased within a short time of the accident, possibly within minutes. The media isn't supposed to release the names until the relevant authorities (police, FAA, whatever) have notified the relatives. If I recall, this is not a universal custom.

On Saturday, witnesses said the airplane, a single-engine Piper PA-32R-300 that had taken off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and was flying south along the river, appeared to lose control as it banked steeply to the left and struck the a sightseeing helicopter not far off the shoreline in Hoboken, N.J.

Interesting.

I would like to point out that, in the event of a mid-air collision, both pilots are held to be at fault until proven otherwise (and the "otherwise" is seldom proven). Aircraft, after all, can dodge not only right and left but up and down as well.

In dramatic scenes glimpsed by hundreds of joggers, bikers, strollers and apartment dwellers on both sides of the mile-wide river, the two aircraft appeared to break apart — a wing from the plane, and rotary blades from the chopper — and fell spinning into the Hudson opposite West 14th Street in Manhattan. Some described the collision as sounding like a quick roll of thunder, followed by an eerie silence.

Yes, quite dramatic. Will be happy if I never see such a thing in person myself.

“I saw the plane coming down and the helicopter coming across,” said Hilda Igartua, 53, of Union City, N.J., who was on the Hoboken waterfront. When the aircraft collided, the plane’s trajectory did not change, she said, but the helicopter came apart and spun down in pieces.

Yes, the airplane follows the usual laws of physics and the pieces generally tend to keep going in the direction they were before the accident, although some alteration of trajectory, particularly of smaller pieces, are not unheard of. Helicopters, however, involve a lot of rotation. When their parts start detaching, well, they go all over the place. If one rotor blade breaks and the other doesn't the resulting imbalance and vibration will literally tear the machine apart. And they drop like rocks.

A distraught woman who answered the phone at the home of Steven Altman in Fort Washington, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb, said that Mr. Altman, her husband, owns the plane involved in the crash. She said that he was a licensed pilot and had been scheduled to fly his plane on Saturday from Teterboro Airport to Ocean City, N.J.

She said the only call she had received was from a person at Teterboro who was checking to see if the plane’s tail number matched her husband’s plane. She said that it did.

Now THAT is a horrible call to get. As I said, who was on the airplane was known rather quickly, and it appears that the media got this lady's phone number. They may have gotten it from the flight plan, as they are a matter of public record, and the pilot is required to give a phone number when filing one.

The cause of the collision on Saturday was not immediately clear and was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and local authorities, but witnesses said the helicopter, which had taken off moments earlier from a base at West 30th Street in Manhattan, appeared to have been blindsided by the airplane.

Please note the part in bold (again).

I will note that helicopter pilots need to look ^UP^ prior to going that direction. That won't always prevent these sorts of situations, but it helps. I will also note that the PA-32 has a significant and unavoidable blind spot underneath it because you can't see through the floor, it being non-transparent aluminum. The worst case scenario is the airplane approaching the chopper from above and behind, as helicopter pilots don't have eyes in the back of their heads, and even if they did, the rear of helicopter cabins is typically not transparent. That may have been what happened here.

What the plane pilot did or did not see in his peripheral vision could be a significant factor, said R. W. Mann, an aviation consultant in Port Washington, N.Y. Distraction poses a constant problem in the area, especially during peak traffic periods, Mr. Mann said, noting that congestion is especially high on a clear weekend day like Saturday.

And that is why you are most likely to be involved in a mid-air on a clear day on the weekend. The only thing that makes the odds worse is to be near an airport on a clear day on the weekend. Why? Because in such conditions a lot of airplanes are off the ground and that's where airplanes congregate. There, and in VFR flyways such as over the Hudson (a bit more on VFR flyways in a moment).

Air traffic controllers do not manage the traffic in the Hudson corridor where the collision occurred. “There is a common frequency which you can voluntarily use to announce where you are, where you’re going, listen to other pilots doing the same thing,” said Mr. Bloomberg, but it was unclear if the helicopter pilot had announced his position or if the plane operator was listening.

A VFR (Visual Flight Rules) Flyway is a designated path in the sky. They aren't uncommon in/above large cities (Chicago, for example, has two - one along the lakefront and another just west of the city). They may or may not pass by tourist-attracting scenery (Chicago lakefront VFR), and they are also used to route traffic around large hub airports (the VFR west of Chicago, which routes planes around O'Hare and Midway airspace, separating larger commercial aviation from smaller operations and private pilots). In New York City the Hudson flyway - which is what we're talking about here - is heavily used. That's why so many accidents seem to happen over the Hudson - that's where the airplanes are. Cory Lidle was in this flyway on a sight-seeing flight when he took a wrong turn and got into fatal trouble, for example. The helicopter tour involved here was also obviously catering to sight seeing. The airplane involved was probably doing the same, maybe combined with going from point A to point B. Flying down a man-made canyon is quite dramatic. It can also be hazardous. The Chicago VFR lakefront flyway on a pretty weekend afternoon is like the Dan Ryan expressway, but everything happening a heck of a lot faster. Everything I've heard about the Hudson VFR flyway indicates it's the same or even more crowded.

That said - there are some rules and customs involved here. Aircraft going in different directions are supposed to be at separate altitudes allowing ample room for any instrument or pilot errors in holding exact altitudes (private pilots are require to hold altitude within 100 feet or 30 meters to get a license, and instruments are to have an error no more than half that - commercial operations have considerably higher standards). Helicopters normally try to fly at different altitudes than airplanes do as the two sorts of aircraft have different visibility and maneuverability. An additional complication is that urban flyways frequently have a relatively low "ceiling" due to airport hub airspace overhead. The Hudson is one such. This gives pilots fewer options for choosing an altitude

And no, air traffic control is NOT in charge there, the pilots are. "Visual Flight Rules" means the pilots are in charge of avoiding other airplanes. IF ATC has some spare time they can help you out, but they are not obligated to do so. A lot of pilots ask for "flight following" which is ATC giving you advisories as they have time to do so but that is more a matter of someone shouting out a helpful tidbit now and again, it's not real traffic avoidance. I will also add that radar can't look through solid objects like skyscrapers, of which New York City has an abundance. ATC can't do a heck of a lot if you don't show up on their screens. I know that going down the Chicago Lakefront flyway the Loop skyscrapers produce a radar "shadow" - if you're low enough to be in the flyway (and out of O'Hare's and Midway's airspace) there's no way for ATC to see you at times. If you fly high enough to show up reliably on radar you risk being run over by a 747 or Airbus, which would ruin everyone's day. I suspect the Hudson flyway is similar.

So if you're flying a VFR flyway you MUST be alert and keep a sharp eye for traffic. You're basically entering an airborne freeway with heavy traffic. They can be safely negotiated, obviously, people do it every day, but as in all aviation mistakes can have severe consequences.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey, speaking in Hoboken, called for a closer examination of the traffic flow above the Hudson River. “You wouldn’t want this kind of circumstance to be repeated,” he said. “We need to be particularly mindful that there are many more families living along the river than has historically been the case.”

However, New York’s mayor said the city’s accessibility remains an important consideration. “It may be one of those things where no amount of restrictions, other than preventing aircraft from coming into the area, could have prevented,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And that’s not something that anybody wants, either.”

Bloomberg is right here - there's a limit to what regulation can prevent.

I will also note that flyways are typically laid out to minimize risk to people on the ground. Hence, it's the Hudson River flyway, not the Wall Street flyway. You keep the aircraft over the water so if there's an accident the wreckage is less likely to fall on people. Again, the Chicago lakefront flyway is entirely over the water, as was the traffic pattern for Meigs field back when it was still in existence. Unfortunately for those aboard the aircraft such traffic patterns mean that you can add "drowning" to the list of Bad Things that can happen on a flight, and make surviving a problem less likely, but it does protect those on the ground, particularly where flyways pass by beaches and tourist venues.

Federal Aviation Administration officials confirmed that the airplane, a white and red craft with several seats, had taken off from Teterboro and was bound for Ocean City, N.J.

Probably got that off the flight plan, as stating the color and number of seats on an aircraft is required information.

Somehow, the officials said, it stopped appearing on the radar of air traffic controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Not as uncommon as you might think - as I mentioned, skyscrapers interfere with radar returns. There are other reasons for an aircraft to drop off the radar when it's in the typical mode of operation (transponder failure, slow speed - not likely with this airplane - and for ultralights small size combined with materials that aren't very reflective to radar, which again wouldn't apply to the aluminum Piper).

Almost at the same time, two pilots in planes near the scene called in reports of an aircraft in distress over the water, between the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Well, they were paying attention to other air traffic - actually, pilot reports of incidents and accidents is common in VFR conditions.

Moments later, the New York Police Department began receiving a flood of reports that the aircraft had collided and gone down. Paola Casali, 42, a tourist from Rome, was visibly shaken as she sat at the heliport a few hours after the crash. She said she had been hoping to make a midday helicopter tour with her 13-year-old son Lorenzo, but arrived shortly after the doomed helicopter had left. When she called two days ago to reserve a flight, they told her to show up at the heliport on Saturday between noon and 1 p.m.

“When we arrived there were no other passengers here.” Ms. Casali said, wondering about the fate that had prevented her and her son from taking the tragic trip.

“I feel so confused, but I feel that we are so lucky,” she said. “Today begins a new life for me. What is so strange is that this morning Lorenzo felt so nervous and did not want to fly today. He wanted to stay behind in a Starbucks but I said ‘No, no, no, this is completely safe,’ ” she said, adding that she had taken a similar helicopter tour in New York about six years ago without any incident.

OK, air travel is actually pretty safe these days, but there is always some inherent risk in leaving the ground. It's never "completely" safe. Then again, neither is taking a shower in your own home.

[Wicked Pilot]

Though financially painful to GA it may be necessary to just mandate TACS in the NYC mode C veil.

[Broomstick]

What disturbs me is not further regulation based upon safety (seriously, some VFR flyways are scary and do need more structure) but rather the hysterical calls to ban all little airplanes.

Of course, I am admittedly biased on that subject.

[Broomstick]

The NBC network obtained a video of the actual collision, from an Italian tourist testing out a new camera who just happened to catch the action.

It very clearly shows the airplane in a climbing right turn, overtaking the helicopter from behind. I doubt the chopper pilot, or anyone aboard, could see that airplane approaching, but the airplane should have been able to see the chopper above the airplane. You can see the airplane banked, and the low wing being sliced off as it crosses the rotor disk.

The NTSB will definitely want a copy. This tilts the verdict towards the airplane pilot being at fault though there will be more to do in regards to the investigation and the final determination is, as usual, probably a year to eighteen months away.