Lidle crash: who is wrong?

"Peter R." wrote in message
...
As Gary indicated, aircraft flying up the east side of Manhattan in
the VFR corridor are required to turn around and fly back to the south,
as the corridor ends around the north end of Roosevelt Island.

How does an aircraft hit the north face of a building along the river
there? One possibility is that the pilot lost control of the aircraft
during the turn, say due to a stall. Another possibility is that the
pilot
misjudged the point at which to begin the turn.

My guess is that they flew too fast and failed to remember that the turn
radius increases with the square of the airspeed. When they saw the
buildings coming, they banked steeply, causing them to descend and possibly
stall. (A witness on the ground who is also a pilot reported seeing the
plane in an unusually steep bank just before impact.)

--Gary

112 mph, 30 deg bank = 3000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 45 deg bank = 2000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 60 deg bank = 1000 ft turn diameter

So, if the "canyon" is 2000 ft wide, and they were traveling
up the middle, incredibly difficult to make the turn safely.

www.csgnetwork.com/aircraftturninfocalc.html

"Blanche" wrote in message
...
112 mph, 30 deg bank = 3000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 45 deg bank = 2000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 60 deg bank = 1000 ft turn diameter

So, if the "canyon" is 2000 ft wide, and they were traveling
up the middle, incredibly difficult to make the turn safely.

www.csgnetwork.com/aircraftturninfocalc.html

I wouldn't characterize a 45-60 degree bank as "incredibly difficult". But
if there was an easterly wind, then their margin would have been reduced by
several hundred feet; that could've been part of the problem.

--Gary

Gary Drescher wrote:
"Blanche" wrote in message
...
112 mph, 30 deg bank = 3000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 45 deg bank = 2000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 60 deg bank = 1000 ft turn diameter

So, if the "canyon" is 2000 ft wide, and they were traveling
up the middle, incredibly difficult to make the turn safely.

www.csgnetwork.com/aircraftturninfocalc.html

I wouldn't characterize a 45-60 degree bank as "incredibly difficult". But
if there was an easterly wind, then their margin would have been reduced by
several hundred feet; that could've been part of the problem.

--Gary

The winds here are usually S or N Easterly, but on that day in the
afternoon were very light with weak infrequent gusts.

The margins you guys are talking about seem awful tight, but that's why
you're pilots and I'm not. I can calculate pretty well in my head and
have good technical ability (was a contributor to the original Ethernet
standard that became the Internet), but hurtling along in the sky
trying to figure and implement turning radii? Forget about air over the
wing plane, my gray matter wuold go into a stall. Yet, the record is
what it is and it's obvious almost all of you manage just fine. Plainly
there is an almost pure Darwinian selection that goes on and you people
who end up at the throttle have passed through filters within filters.
This even more than licensing is what gives you the right. This is also
why celebrities, athletes and perhaps the occasional type-A
businessman/woman are a bit worrisome-- they have the means and status
to sidestep some of these filters. What we may need here is a
contribution from some of our better legal minds: can you craft an
enforceable law making it a little harder for new GA pilots from
non-aviation backgrounds to zip next to skyscrapers, all without being
communistic or fascistic about it?

--
B

--
B

"Blasto" wrote in message
ups.com...

"Blanche" wrote in message
...
112 mph, 30 deg bank = 3000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 45 deg bank = 2000 ft turn diameter
112 mph, 60 deg bank = 1000 ft turn diameter

The margins you guys are talking about seem awful tight, but that's why
you're pilots and I'm not. I can calculate pretty well in my head and
have good technical ability (was a contributor to the original Ethernet
standard that became the Internet), but hurtling along in the sky
trying to figure and implement turning radii?

You'd want to plan it in advance, not calculate it in real time. (In fact,
it is just such a calculation--in combination with other factors, such as
the high-density traffic--that convinced me in the past that there's not
enough of a safety margin, so I've chosen to avoid the East River.)

What we may need here is a
contribution from some of our better legal minds: can you craft an
enforceable law making it a little harder for new GA pilots from
non-aviation backgrounds to zip next to skyscrapers, all without being
communistic or fascistic about it?

Such a law would be neither necessary nor sufficient to address the risk.
Small planes have been flying along the Hudson River and East River for
decades, and this is the first such crash I'm aware of; so there seems to be
no necessity for tighter restriction. Further, such a restriction would be
insufficient to prevent this sort of accident. After all, Lidle was flying
with an experienced CFI (flight instructor). But (apart from mountain-canyon
flying) a pilot's experience almost never addresses a situation like this,
so years of prior flying wouldn't necessarily help. In fact, this is the
sort of thing that a new pilot might even better at than a moderately
experienced one, because students are drilled in all sorts of obscure
matters that they soon forget because those matters don't come up in the
course of ordinary flying.

--Gary