Small Plane Crashes into Manhattan Building

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My sons are glued to the TV right now....I am having a flashback of Thurman Munson I think I was about the same age of my older son.

I hope to god there is no one else on board.
 
I'm really down. Having him as a player for years endears you to him. You feel close to players in Philly. He only left 3 months ago.
 
They're running clips of him flying from a local Philadelphia station, WPVI, which I think is ABC.
 
Very sad indeed.

Lidle used to pitch for Oakland. Here's hoping they can pull off a win for him tonight against the Tigers.
 
Reggie Thee Dog said:
Cory Lidle - reminds of the day Thurman Munson crashed his plane. God rest his soul and those of the others who died in this tragedy.

I'm at the library where I work, and a teenage girl was telling me about this. I told her "before you were born, there was a Yankees player named Thurman Munson, a catcher, who was flying a plane home and was killed in a plane crash." Munson is one of the most beloved Yankees ever...I've seen guys get emotional as they reminisce about him.

What an awful way to die, either as a pilot or one of the people in the apartment. RIP to all.
 
Now that we've lost Thurman and Cory Lidle, maybe ballplayers will stop being pilots. What's really fucked is that if the Yankees had won the ALDS, Lidle would still be alive.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:


i want to say you're out of your mind, but i noticed that it was the 11th very quickly after the news first struck. paranoia i guess.

I hate to bring up 9-11 with this news, but I feel very much for the people of NYC because of that huge scar that was left from 5 years ago and how something like this can trigger all those terrible emotions.

Here´s to Lidle´s family´s peace of mind and for everybody else in NYC.
 
R.I.P. I was at the studio yesterday and someone said something about a plane crashing into a building in NYC. We were pretty freaked and checked out the news on the Internet using the computer in the office. It was announced that the pilot of the plane had been killed, but they didn't know who it was at the time. They said it definitely was not connected with terrorists, so we were all pretty relieved, although of course sad that someone got killed. :sad: :sad:
 
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A Skilled Aviator, but Aloft in Unfamiliar Skies

By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and ALAN FEUER
New York Times, October 13, 2006


To those who knew him, Tyler Stanger was the real deal: an aviation enthusiast who had hung around a small private airport east of Los Angeles since he was 17 and become both a mechanic and a pilot, an unusual combination. But Mr. Stanger’s passion for planes did not translate into swagger. As a pilot and a flight instructor, he was cool and meticulous, former students and friends said, a stickler for safety measures like checklists who seemed more mature than his 26 years.

Mr. Stanger, who once worked as a Mormon missionary for two years, was married with one child and another on the way.

Most of Stanger's work was in the wide-open skies of the American West. He and the Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle, also a Californian, had become friends, and that was one of the reasons why Mr. Lidle asked him to come east to help him fly his new single-engine Cirrus SR20 airplane back to California this week.

Still, for all his experience, it appears that Mr. Stanger had flown a loop around Manhattan and up the East River only once, according to a former student. Mr. Stanger took the stretch about two years ago after he purchased a Cessna 172 in the New York area to use for flight instruction. “He told me that after he bought his plane, he flew the route around the Statue of Liberty and up the river,” recalled the student, Jason Paul, 23.

On Wednesday, he and Mr. Lidle were killed when the pitcher’s plane slammed into a 42-story building on the Upper East Side. If this was Mr. Stanger’s second time up this section of the East River, then Mr. Stanger was traveling with little experience through a patch of urban air that many veteran New York City pilots say they make a point of avoiding. They say that pilots try to keep from doing what Mr. Lidle’s plane did: turning left sharply between the east and west banks of the river in an attempt to avoid going into La Guardia Airport airspace.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday that the pair had told air traffic controllers they intended to make the left turn and that they were traveling at 112 miles per hour when last glimpsed on radar. The investigators said the plane had gone to 500 feet from 700 feet in roughly a quarter of a mile, but gave no suggestion as to why. Investigators said they were not even sure who was flying the plane, a sporty four-seater.

Local pilots with experience traveling through New York City’s busy and tricky airspace said that Mr. Lidle’s plane appeared to have followed the rules when he turned left, but that they knew better alternatives: either pilots get clearance from La Guardia, which would not have been a problem on Wednesday; or just skip the East River altogether and go up the Hudson River; or request permission to turn right and make a U-turn that carries them over a sliver of Queens. One pilot said that he would rather run the risk of receiving a citation by flying without permission through La Guardia airspace than attempt the left turn.

Pilots are allowed to fly without contact with air traffic controllers up the East River to Roosevelt Island’s northern tip in what is known as an “exclusion” devised to keep small craft away from larger craft and to reduce radio traffic with controllers in congested New York. To fly north past the island, a pilot needs to request the clearance from La Guardia. Without a clearance, however, the pilot must make the 180-degree turn in the confined space above the river banks — a width of about 2,000 feet. “It’s like a box canyon,” said Ken Nurenberg, who has flown in the New York area for 30 years, but has never flown in a fixed-wing aircraft up the East River. “You go in, but you have to turn around to get out. You’re not allowed off the river and it’s pretty narrow.” Stanley Anderson, who owns AviateRight, a flight school in Farmingdale, N.Y., has flown the route 50 times, but always with a clearance to continue on from La Guardia. “I would never even try to do a 180,” he said. “No way.” Mr. Anderson said he did not allow customers to fly the route because, as he put it, “there’s no room for error.” He added that if he even if he did not get clearance from La Guardia, if it was a question of safety, he would probably enter its airspace.
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Though Mr. Stanger may not have been familiar with the skies over New York City, he had rigorously studied aviation in all its different aspects...In 2001, he graduated from Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., with an associate in science degree after majoring in commercial flight. Three years later, Mr. Stanger received a bachelor’s degree in aviation management from Southern Illinois University under a program run in partnership with Mount San Antonio College. He received his flight instructor’s license in September 2003.

Mr. Stanger started his own company, Stang-Air, in 2003 at Brackett Field in the San Gabriel Valley. But he still did delivery flights and some contract work for Howard Aviation. Through Stang-Air, he offered flight lessons and sightseeing flights from the airport. Mr. Stanger had also been a corporate contract pilot for about a year, flying multiengine propeller planes and single-engine turbo propeller aircraft, which are similar to jets, according to Robin Howard, president of Howard Aviation Inc., where Mr. Stanger started working when he was in high school. “He would be a guy I would want there in case things got tense. He seemed capable of handling all kinds of emergencies,” said Carl Colley, 57, a former student of Mr. Stanger’s. “He was very enthusiastic, but not a risk taker.”

“He was like a son to me,” Mr. Howard said. “He was a great pilot. He could fly any plane you could ask him to. He was a natural.”

stangernyt.jpg
 
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Diane L said:


I'm at the library where I work, and a teenage girl was telling me about this. I told her "before you were born, there was a Yankees player named Thurman Munson, a catcher, who was flying a plane home and was killed in a plane crash." Munson is one of the most beloved Yankees ever...I've seen guys get emotional as they reminisce about him.

What an awful way to die, either as a pilot or one of the people in the apartment. RIP to all.

After I found out that Lidle was on the plane, I thought of Munson and that season with the Yankees. Very sad.

USA Today did a good story on athletes who have been involved in aircraft incidents. Very interesting.
 
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