Investigators Search High-Rise for Plane Parts, Trying to Learn What Happened in Lidle Crash, by Deepti Hajela   (Associated Press)

Investigators and workers in hard hats gathered up the scorched pieces of New York Yankee Cory Lidle’s shattered plane at a luxury high-rise Thursday in a floor-by-floor sweep for clues to why the aircraft crashed.

The pitcher and his flight instructor were killed when their plane slammed into the 40-story condominium tower Wednesday.

Crews recovered the nose, wings, tail and instrument panel of the plane along with a hand-held GPS device as they conducted an exhaustive search of the building — inspecting even terraces and ledges, said National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.

Men in hard hats lifted pieces of wreckage from the street and placed them neatly on a silver-colored tarp in the bed of a pickup truck. Neighborhood children gathered to gawk at the jagged and twisted metal, glass shards, and charred wing and door.

Hersman said the single-engine plane was cruising at 112 mph at 700 feet of altitude as it tried to make a U-turn to go south down the East River. It was last seen on radar about a quarter-mile north of the building, in the middle of the turn, at 500 feet.

“Early examination indicates that the propellers were turning” at the time of impact, Hersman said, suggesting the engine was still running.

More details also emerged Thursday about the flight instructor who was with Lidle aboard the four-seat Cirrus SR20 during the sightseeing flight around Manhattan. Tyler Stanger, 26, operated a flight school in La Verne, Calif.

The crash prompted renewed calls for the government to restrict the airspace around Manhattan to help ensure planes cannot get so close to the city’s skyscrapers. Much of the airspace over two of the main rivers that encircle Manhattan is open to small aircraft flying under 1,100 feet.

A day after the crash, the building had a gaping hole where bricks and glass used to be, and a black scorch mark, six stories long.

Hersman said that as of September, there were 545 SR20s registered in the United States. Since 2001, the NTSB has investigated 18 accidents involving the plane; those crashes resulted in 14 deaths.

Associated Press Writers Colleen Long, Beth Fouhy, Adam Goldman, Amy Westfeldt, and David B. Caruso in New York and John Rogers in La Verne, Calif., contributed to this report.
 

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 7:28 am and is filed under Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary
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