11 October 2006
A light aircraft has crashed into an apartment block on the East Side of Manhattan, killing at least four people. Others are said to be trapped in the building.
The aircraft – a four-seater, type as yet unknown – was owned and being flown by Cory Lidle, a New York Yankees baseball star. He died, along with his passenger. The aircraft had left Teterboro Airport about 15 minutes earlier.
The aircraft appears to have impacted the 50-storey Belaire Condominiums at 2.45 this afternoon. Some witnesses talk about it levelling out before the crash, others suggest that it had been flying at about 800 ft before suddenly veering off course. There was a post-impact fire coming out of two windows, smoke, and some wreckage burning on the ground.
The immediate reaction of the world’s press, of course, was that this might have been terrorism, but now there appears to be no evidence of that . US authorities have scrambled fighter aircraft over a number of cities, but it appears that there is no immediate knee-jerk reaction. Airspace a mile around the condo has been closed, but this doesn’t affect the city’s airports. It is fairly standard in this type of incident to allow security services to function.
A witness told CNN: “It looks like the plane just flew into someone’s living room. It looks as if the aircraft didn’t go into the building but fell down.”
