Airtimes

The plane was fighting the wind as it came in and never lowered it’s gear. Hit the runway and slid all the way to the end of the runway into the fence. I was surprised, it went further down the runway on it’s belly than on it’s wheels. (I suppose brakes cause more friction than smooth aluminum.)

No one was hurt. The Pilot claimed he was so worried and distracted by the crosswind that he forgot about the landing gear.

This is the 5th accident here in 3 weeks associated with our unusual high winds. 3 crashes, unfortunately, resulted in fatalities.

I’ve never been witness to a fatal crash, despite working at an airport for close to 10 years, thank God for small favors. I have seen a couple of gear up landings, both Baron drivers that for whatever reason simply forgot to extend the landing gear. The sound of propellers hitting concrete is very loud.
And I got to watch as a friend had the NLG of his Merlin II snap away on landing. I reached the airplane before the fire crews did.

And I lost a friend to an off airport crash when he took off in his V-35 with his fuel selector set to a tank that only had about 6 min’s worth of fuel in it.

In a seperate incident, I’ve had to quarantine my FBO’s avgas trucks for inspection and go deal with an aircraft owner’s hysterical wife.

I’ve lost a coworker to a bird strike while he was giving a lesson; leaving behind a wife and infant.

It sucks, but it happens, and it’ll keep happening without regard to any practices we put in place to try to minimize it. Currently, all we can do is minimize incidents and injury; it’s unfortunate, but crashes will continue to happen, pilots will continue to make an erroneous judgment or just have brain farts.

Training, intimacy with the airplane, and discipline with regards to obeying the checklists is the only thing I can think of that will help abate the disasters.

Technorati Tags: Aircraft Owner, airplane crash, Avgas, Bird Strike, Brain Farts, Checklists, Coworker, Crash Today, Crosswind, Fatal Crash, Fbo, Fire Crews, First Airplane, High Winds, Intimacy, landings, Nlg, Piper Saratoga, saratoga, Small Favors

These photos were taken by an old woman who were trying to take some shots of both aircraft close together but it ended up they crashed to each other. She submitted those to FOX news only!

These are the only photos believed to be taken of this deadly crash! No High Quality Pics available from FOX NEWS!

Liberty tour sightseeing charter company helicopter, Eurocopter AS 350, carrying five Italian tourists collided with a small Piper PA-32 plane on Saturday noon, August 08, 2009 over the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. All nine people aboard are believed to be killed.

The instrument-rated pilot of the Piper, 60-year-old Steven Altman, departed from nearby Teterboro Airport moments before the collision, after stopping to pick up his brother and his nephew. There was some confusion between Altman and the Teterboro tower controller as to which route the Piper would take toward its destination, Ocean City in southern New Jersey. Ultimately, Altman said, “Tell you what, I’ll take down the river.” That placed the Piper inside the Hudson River VFR corridor, a narrow strip of VFR airspace that extends from the surface to 1,100 feet, and from the New York side of the river to the east and the New Jersey side to the west. Altitude readouts for the Lance show it flying at just that height or about 100 feet lower until the collision moments later. The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350 operated by Liberty Helicopter Tours, had departed from the 30th Street Heliport and was in a climbing turn southbound as part of its planned 12-minute tour. Along with the pilot, New Zealander Jeremy Clarke, 33, were five tourists from Bologna, Italy. The right wing of the Piper separated after it contacted the rotor disc of the helicopter and both aircraft spun into the water with nonsurvivable impact.

All the crash victims may REST IN PEACE!

Duration : 0:2:50

Technorati Tags: accident, air accident, air emergency, and, Bloomberg's, chopper, City, Collision, crash, emergency landing, Eurocopter AS 350, Exclusive, Fatal, FOX, Glenn, Helicopter, hudson, impact, IN, Italian, killed, Lower, Manhattan, Mayor, Michael, Mid Air Collision, Mid-Air, moment, new, New York, news, nine, NYC, Over, PEACE, Pew, Piper, Piper PA-32, Press, Release, rescue, REST, river, saratoga, Small, The, Tourist, york