Lidle’s Cirrus SR20 crash evoked 9/11 memories

Memories of 9/11 attacks came alive on Wednesday when a small aircraft crashed into a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan, apparently killing two people and triggering speculations of terror attacks.

The private plane, a Cirrus SR20, was being flown by New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who was one of the two dead, and was the owner of the aircraft. The aircraft carrying Lidle, 34 and his flight instructor was flying in a place where many recreational pilots fear to venture, the US media reports stated.

Although authorities ruled out the possibilities of terror attacks, still they ordered fighter jets to swiftly takeoff and scramble over US cities. New York authorities raised security alert levels after the plane slammed into the building on Manhattan's swanky Upper East Side.

“There is nothing to suggest anything remotely like terrorism was Involved,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomburg.

Mr. Lidle’s plane struck the upper floors of the 50-storey apartment building around 2.45 pm (1845 GMT), raining down burning debris and drawing attention of hundreds of New Yorkers. The spot where the plane hit the apartment building on the Upper East Side is near the end of the “uncontrolled” corridor at the edge of the airspace governed by La Guardia Airport.

Bloomberg said the plane carrying Lidle, a student pilot and instructor took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, circled the State of Liberty and then headed up the East River before disappearing from radar screens.

The northern end of the airspace over the East River is a hazardous, narrow corridor which often seems crowded with helicopters carrying tourists, business people and traffic reporters along the edge of Manhattan. Inside that corridor, small planes like Mr. Lidle’s and helicopters can fly below 1,100 feet without getting clearance from air-traffic controllers. However, most of the pilots said they did not dare to fly at that altitude because it could be crowded.

This is not the first time the model of single-engine aircraft that slammed into a Manhattan apartment building yesterday, met with an accident, rather in the past seven years, this specific model has been involved in 20 accidents in which at least 15 people died, data of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and published reports revealed.

The recent before the current one is last month’s fatal accident in which two Southampton furniture designers died when their Cirrus SR20 crashed in Colorado on September 15.

Mr. Lidle’s four-year-old plane Cirrus SR20 was a model that has become popular because of its speed and an unusual safety feature, a Ballistic Recovery System parachute. This large parachute is designed to avert a crash landing. A pilot can activate the feature if the engine fails or if the plane is involved in a collision but in case of Lidle’s plane crash there was no evidence that such feature was deployed.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Company that makes the aircraft defended itself by saying that the planes design or techniques are no way accountable for the accident. "I can tell you that the accidents had nothing to do with the integrity of the airplane," said Kate Dougherty, spokeswoman for Duluth-based Cirrus Design. "Generally, accidents happen because of decisions made in the cockpit."

Mr. Lidle himself seemed satisfied with the aircraft features. Last month, in an interview, he said, “Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you’re up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.”

For the investigations, the safety board has dispatched a six-member team yesterday from Washington to New York.