Very sad. Lets hope there's some good news later on. Not holding too much hope though.

I was caught in the Lincoln Tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan when that happened. As the whole of New York's finest made their way to the rivers edge, it produced a bit of a jam. I was on my way to JKF to fly home at the time. Fortunately we budgeted quite a bit of extra time to cross so we where not late for the flight.

Matt

Fozzer wrote on Aug 9^th, 2009 at 5:52am:

Yeah I agree, I find helicopters flying low alot also.

At my house across the streeet they havent built the houses yet so its a big dirt lot. Well one time a helicopter was trying to land there.

He was making his approach then as he got alot closer he realized he couldn't land so he flew away. What is a helicopter gunna land in the suburbs for? 

Before you know it the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds will be practicing by flying inbetween buildings.

It's very odd that an airplane and helicopter collided in that airspace- the tour helis tend to fly lower, in fact I think that one had just departed the 30th st. heliport nearby.
It's not forbidden, but fixed-wing traffic should, and usually does, stay around 1000 ft. AGL or thereabouts. why the Piper was descending, I don't know, but apparently that's what happened... the pilot failed to see the chopper slip right under his nose and he descended onto it.
There's really quite a lot of room for all sorts of traffic in there, if common sense is exercised.

Fozzer wrote on Aug 9^th, 2009 at 5:55pm:


Well...despite the sometimes-large volume of "free flying" traffic in that area for almost 100 years there has only been one midair over the Hudson so far (that I know of)!
Sure, it can be risky in there... but not by the nature of the airspace, so much as by lack of good practice on the part of pilots.

There's no ATC control within that area- in fact, it's a VFR free-flight exclusion carved out of the  KEWR and KLGA Class B airspaces.
If it were to fall under control of ATC, as the much smaller East River exclusion has (since the infamous "Lidle crash"), they'd be hard-pressed to deal with the helicopter traffic alone, let alone the fixed-wing passers-by. The various heliports in NYC are literally like beehives on nice days... one after another, coming and going, carrying tourists, mostly, but also commuters to and from KEWR, KTEB, etc.  At any given time, choppers far outnumber fixed-wing craft within the corridor.

There are guidelines, however, and if they are followed, and all pilots are watching the airspace and not the scenery (!!), everything goes fine. The helicopters usually follow very specific routes, and rarely go above 700 AGL... this helps tremendously.

-All traffic should listen/announce on the Hudson corridor CTAF... helis taking off/landing, aircraft passing landmarks or leaving/entering the corridor.
-Northbound traffic stays on the NY side, southbound on the NJ side.

-Traffic circling/turning at the Statue of Liberty should avoid going in the opposite direction of traffic already circling (the unwritten rule is that you go counter-clockwise, not sure where I heard that, but that's how the choppers usually go).

-My personal guideline regarding altitude: although there's not much you can do from even the very top of the corridor if the engine calls it a day (north of Liberty State Park, you have to ditch or go down in heavily built-up/populated areas), staying as high as possible does increase your options a bit, and most importantly, it keeps you above most of the helicopter traffic!!

 Fixed-wing craft often go down to 500-700 AGL near the statue, but I've never seen anyone flying that low in the area where this midair occurred (abeam the 30th st heliport, but over on the NJ side)... except for helicopters.

It's pretty clear to me at this point that the airplane pilot was lower than he "should" have been. Apparently, another chopper pilot called out on the CTAF about the approaching airplane seconds before impact... neither the accident chopper pilot or the Piper pilot seems to have acknowledged this or done anything about it. I'm going to guess that the chopper pilot probably tried to look, but the Eurocopter has a pretty big blind spot above and behind the pilot. Maybe the Piper pilot heard this too, but didn't see the chopper because it was already under the nose of the PA32 (which has a pretty long nose).
  It's quite possible the Piper pilot wasn't even listening to the CTAF... not a good idea!! You can legally fly in there with no radio, but if you have one, it's just smart to at least listen to the CTAF. If you don't, it's best to stay high and stay very alert.