| Thursday, October 12, 2006 |
21:23 - The power of a good graphic
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2006/10/11/nyregion/20061011_CRASH_GRAPHIC.htm
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Judging by this great animated timeline at the NYT (courtesy Daring Fireball), it seems clear what happened to Cory Lidle's plane.
Going up the East River at less than 1,000 feet, which would put him barely above the rooftops of the buildings around him, he found himself approaching LaGuardia's Class B airspace, and probably got some calls from their tower warning him that he had to get permission to proceed further up the river. His instructor was along, which means one of them should have had the wherewithal to make the necessary calls and get clearance, but any number of things might have been going on at that point, from mechanical failure to radio congestion. With only a minute or so of flying before crossing the boundary, he probably panicked and decided to veer off.
Trouble is, he's in a corridor. He can't climb out of it straight ahead, as that would just take him closer to the Class B and further into the path of approaching jets as the cone spreads out above him. He can't make a wide turn, because there are buildings on both sides of him. He's essentially heading straight down an alleyway that has one of those chain-link fences across it that crooks always escape over, except when you're in a plane you can't stop and take stock of things. About the only option he has is to try to turn around on a dime and head back down the river.
So he did... and panicked as he was, he probably didn't think to lay on the throttle (which in an SR20 would have had plenty of steam left to work with). He pulled a too-tight turn, tighter and tighter as he realized he turned in the wrong direction (left, toward the nearer bank), lost altitude, found himself heading straight into a wall of buildings, and hit one 300 feet up.
With that in mind, that East River corridor starts to look like a death trap, huh? It's almost as though sooner or later, with walls and ceilings all around you and a restricted-airspace boundary looming up ahead, something like this was more or less bound to happen eventually...
UPDATE: CapLion, a local, says that this scenario is unlikely. Which I guess just goes to show: sometimes a graphic might only look like it's too well-done to be misleading...
Here's a photo, which has its own perspective issues, but is also useful to the discussion. The building where the crash occurred, helpfully enough, is in the lower right.
And here's another perspective, with a couple of potential approaches (I think A is more plausible, but that's just me).
UPDATE: I suppose this isn't too surprising. Yet requiring pilots to be in contact with ATC isn't the same thing as "banning" them. This is a far cry from the usual knee-jerk "My kid burned down the house, so Beavis can't say 'fire' anymore" stuff we all dread.
UPDATE: You know, if I'm so wrong about this, how come people who know seem to keep coming to the same conclusion?
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Brian Tiemann
