Manhattan Plane Crash Raises Spectre of Second 9/11

The pall of black smoke that rose over Manhattan's upper east side and the news that a plane had crashed into a tower block in New York yesterday was enough to raise parallels with September 11 for most residents in the city. But as news of the crash spread, so too did the details; a light aircraft piloted by a pitcher with America's largest baseball club, the New York Yankees, had smashed into the side of an apartment building.

While emergency services scrambled to the scene and television stations showed images of the burning building, the North American aerospace defence ordered fighter planes to fly above a number of large cities. But within two hours of the crash, Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was identified as the owner of the Cirrus SR20 plane that hit the 20th floor of the 50-storey Belaire block in 72nd street. His passport was reported to have been found on the streets around the Belaire, along with the tail wings of the plane.

The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg. gave a public address shortly after the accident and touched on New York's sensitivity post-9/11. "Everybody is sensitive when a plane goes into a building. But homeland security sees no evidence of anything relating to terrorism or anything remotely like it," he said.

Lidle, aged 34, acquired his pilot's licence only a few months ago, and had been planning to fly the plane across the country to California, where he intended to spend the off-season improving his aviation skills.

Ironically, he bought the Cirrus model because he thought it was safe. "The whole plane has a parachute on it," he told the New York Times last month. "Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1% 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."

The newspaper quoted one of his instructors as saying: "He was probably my best student. He learned very, very quickly, and a lot of it is desire. He had huge desire."

Lidle's death is the second flying tragedy to befall the Yankees. The team's captain, Thurman Munson, was killed when the aircraft he was piloting crashed in 1979.

The Cirrus took off from New Jersey's Teterboro airport, across the Hudson river from Manhattan, at 2.25pm. Radar signals show that the plane circling the Statue of Liberty then flew over the East river alongside Manhattan at 1,500ft. It then turned into Manhattan and lost height very rapidly to just 400ft. At that point the radar signal was lost.

Henry Neimark, a pilot who witnessed the accident while driving along the Brooklyn to Queens expressway, said he saw a plane banking very steeply to the left over the East river at a height of 700 or 800ft.

"I said to myself that it was very odd to see a plane manoeuvring so close to the ground - doing what almost looked like acrobatics," said Mr Neimark. "I suddenly saw it hit the building in a huge ball of flames."

Richard Drutman, a professional photographer who lives on the Belaire tower's 11th floor, said he was speaking on the telephone when he felt the building shake. "There was a huge explosion. I looked out my window, and saw what appeared to be pieces of wings on fire, falling from the sky," he said. He added that he and his girlfriend had quickly left the building.

Large crowds assembled close to the Belaire building, amid dozens of emergency vehicles. Several police helicopters hovered over the surrounding neighbourhood.

Eyewitnesses reported the sense of panic when the aircraft ploughed into the building. "I just saw something come across the sky and crash into that building. There was fire, debris and an explosion," said Young May Cha, 23, a medical student at Cornell University.

Mystery writer Carol Higgins Clark lives on the 38th floor of the building and was coming home in a cab when she saw the smoke. "Thank goodness I wasn't at my apartment, writing at the time," she said. She described the building's residents as a mix of actors, doctors, laywers writers, and people with second homes.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was too early to determine what caused the crash. One question the authorities will address is how the plane managed to reach airspace above residential areas of Manhattan, which has been strictly prohibited since the September 11 attacks five years ago.