Plane crashes into New York apartment block

David Usborne

It was the moment that all of Manhattan froze. Just before three in the afternoon all normal broadcasting was interrupted with a chilling bulletin: “Small plane crashes into New York building” - exactly the news flash that heralded the World Trade Tower catastrophe of five years and one month ago. The images told us that once again something bad had happened. And from street level in most of Midtown Manhattan there was no mistaking it either. From the north this time, under a leaden instead of a clear blue sky, a plume of black smoke was trailing across the city.

We are used to the sound of sirens here, but the frenzy of emergency vehicles pouring up First Avenue told anyone on the ground that another emergency had struck our town. “It was a 747, a 747,” a middle-aged woman shouted at me from the doorstep of a chemist shop as I weaved towards the scene.

Even the government was taking no chances. A grim-faced Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed through a police line at 72nd Street at the same time as this reporter. We heard news, confirmed later, that the strategic air command, Norad, had scrambled fighter aircraft over Manhattan just in case. What we saw on our arrival was both disconcerting and reassuring.

The building, a 50-floor red-brick tower of million-dollar apartments near the East River and directly behind the US headquarters of Sotheby’s the auction house, had a gash high up on its north face, roughly, a police officer suggested, at the 32nd floor. Small flames were still licking the tops of the windows and smoke curled up its side. The charring extended several floors up. Anyone could see, however, that this was not a hole made by any large aircraft, but rather something much smaller. Soon jets of water were visible coming out of the area of damage, a sign that the fire brigade had made up to the damaged floor.

Something less sinister had happened, in fact. As the Upper East Side neighbourhood, which has a cluster of hospitals, small businesses and expensive apartment towers, filled with an ocean of emergency responders, tidbits of accurate information from the authorities started to become available.

This, it appeared, was a tragic accident, albeit one of almost inexplicable misfortune. If the notion of small plane just wandering into a building had seemed less than credible five years ago, this time it appeared to be true. Somehow, a pilot, either through error or under the stress of a mechanical emergency, had strayed into one of the most dense portions of this overcrowded island.

Sources at the FBI last night suggested that the plane was in fact being piloted by Cory Lidle, 39, a star pitcher with the Yankees baseball team, and therefore a beloved local hero. There was confusion over whether he was alone in the plane. He may have been accompanied by an instructor.

In a plane as small as the Cirrus there is no black box and therefore gleaning information in an investigation is difficult. Mr Lidle won his piloting licence only last year and recently purchased the aircraft. Nothing explains why he was in such a congested area of buildings, however.
The impact occurred at around 2.45 pm on a murky New York afternoon that turned to a heavy rain shortly after the emergency began. The plane, identified as Cirrus 20 turbo-prop small aircraft, had taken off just 20 minutes earlier from Teterborough Airport in New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson River.

As many as four people were killed including the pilot andresidents of the tower, known as the Belaire Condominiums.

Some said they had seen the plane flying eratically before impact. “I just saw something come across the sky and crash into that building,” said Young May Cha, 23, a Cornell University medical student who was walking along 72nd Street. “There was fire, debris. The explosion was very small.”

At about 200 feet above the ground there was never any hope for those on board the aircraft. Nor was there any immediate explanation as to how the accident could have happened. Aviation officials noted, however, that both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are permitted to fly under visual conditions, with no air traffic control contact, at low levels along the nearby East River. Penetrating airspace over Manhattan or over Queens to the East is strictly prohibited, however.

Witnesses in the area reported hearing a huge boom at the moment of impact, immediately afterwards followed by a large ball of fire and then thick black smoke that temporarily darkened an already gloomy sky.

Some of those nearby said they saw debris falling to the street. People were then seen running away from the scene. Meanwhile, workers in the many nearby hospitals emerged onto the street and began running towards the smoke to help if they could.

Others, who had been at work when the crash occurred and who live in the area, followed a different instinct from feeling - rather to run straight to the scene to see if a loved one had been inside. Several police officers tackled a large man as he burst through rapidly erected police lines, apparently desperate to get to the building. “It’s my fucking wife, you bastards,” the clearly desperate man said.

In the intersection of 72nd Street and North Avenue, half a block west of the building, scores of doctors and policemen were seen waiting patiently with stretchers still empty, but ready in case any wounded were brought out. Thousands of local residents had meanwhile poured out of their buildings and stood in doorways watching the extraordinary commotion.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Authority as well as officials at the Homeland Security Department confirmed there was no fear that was terrorist connection to the accident. The fighter planes were returned to their bases.