NEW YORK CRASH AFTERMATH
Details as of our deadline were still in flux, but it appears that two people, including Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, 34, were killed when a Cirrus SR20 (Lidle, a private pilot since February, purchased the aircraft in June) crashed into a Manhattan apartment building near the East River yesterday at about 3 p.m. The fiery crash attracted intense media attention and eerily recalled the horrors of 9/11 as black smoke poured into the sky and fire blazed from the upper floors of the 50-story Belaire building. Late reports said an instructor in the airplane also died and up to 21 people, most of them firefighters, were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. No residents of the building were hurt. AOPA warned last night that an editorial in today's USA Today will call for a ban of GA flying over large cities. A response from AOPA will run with the editorial. More...

A SIGHTSEEING FLIGHT
The pilots in the Cirrus had reportedly been on a sightseeing flight in the area. They had taken off from Teterboro Airport, six miles east of New York, in nearby New Jersey, just 23 minutes before the crash. The airplane circled the Statue of Liberty then headed north up the East River. The VFR airspace beneath the Class B follows the river at 11-hundred feet and below, ending (dropping to the surface) north of the crash site. The VFR airspace in that area might be described as a box canyon with a roof. The corridor (and river) is roughly 2,000 feet wide, contains five bridges, Roosevelt Island, has tall buildings on both sides and often includes helicopter and sometimes seaplane traffic. Winds were reported ENE at 13, with gusts to 22. Witness reports suggest that the airplane had made a u-turn to the left from a northern heading. The aircraft hit the north face of the building, at about the 40th story, and broke apart. More...

TFR IN PLACE ABOVE THE SITE
For now, a Temporary Flight Restriction is in place above the accident scene, extending up to and including 1,500 feet AGL, with a radius of 1 nm. Lidle had apparently bought the airplane this summer and had learned to fly in the last off-season. He talked to the New York Times last month about his passion for flight. His instructor Tyler Stanger, in Pomona, Calif., said he was an excellent student. "He learned very, very quickly, and a lot of it is desire. He had huge desire," Stanger told the Times. Lidle said he felt safe in the airplane. "If you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly," he said. The NTSB has dispatched a team to investigate the crash, they were due to arrive in New York last night. More...

SAFETY BOARD INCREASES GA SCRUTINY
General aviation safety issues have been getting more attention lately from the NTSB, and that trend is going to continue, says the board's chairman, Mark Rosenker. "From my perspective, we need to continue to elevate GA safety in public and political eyes, while operating within increasingly tight budgets," Rosenker said at a meeting of safety investigators in Wichita, Kan., late last month. "We are doing this by realigning our priorities, conserving our efforts on accidents that have no safety payback, and ramping up efforts to highlight significant accidents and safety issues. We've already seen the fruits of this realignment over the past few months through an increase in the number of Special Investigation Reports, Safety Recommendations, and board meetings that address GA issues," he said. Rosenker said that over the last few years, the presence of NTSB investigators on-scene for fatal GA accident sites was in decline. More...

NTSB'S CLOSE WATCH OVER NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Jeff Guzzetti, the NTSB's deputy director for regional operations, told AVweb on Tuesday the board is keeping an eye on about a dozen different GA safety issues, many of them involving new technologies. He said the board will be "monitoring very closely" the introduction of very light jets (VLJs). "We'll be very attuned to the operational aspects. We're expecting to see a lot of propeller pilots moving into faster-moving aircraft, and that raises potential issues," he said. He added that the NTSB already has seen three serious accidents in flight testing with VLJ prototypes -- Sino-Swearingen, Spectrum, and Excel Jet -- and investigators have their "eyes and ears perked up" to watch for user-interface issues regarding the VLJs. More...

AGING AIRCRAFT, AIRBAGS, LSAS AND MORE
Other GA areas of concern to the safety board, Guzzetti said, include aging aircraft, air-tour operations, unmanned aerial vehicles and flight into thunderstorms. He's also "very intrigued" with any accidents involving GA aircraft with airbags. "We'll be launching on every one of those, and collecting data," he said. The board wants to study the safety benefits, check to see if the airbags deploy or not and why, and watch for any unintended hazards. Aging aircraft are also a concern, with the average age of the GA fleet approaching 40 years. "These airplanes were never meant to fly this long," Guzzetti said. He doesn't foresee life limits being imposed anytime soon, but noted that the board recently sent two safety recommendations to the FAA regarding problems associated with aging GA aircraft -- cracking control yokes and corroding elevator parts. "The NTSB is very closely monitoring this," he said. As for light sport aircraft (LSA), they will also be getting a close look. More...

TRANSPONDER WASN'T FAULTY, SAYS HONEYWELL
As two American pilots continue to be held in Brazil -- not charged with any crime, but also not allowed to leave the country -- questions about the apparent midair collision between a Legacy 600 business jet and a Boeing 737 over the Amazon jungle on Sept. 29 remain unresolved. All 154 aboard the 737 were killed. Honeywell said on Sunday that the transponder aboard the Legacy jet was not subject to a recent airworthiness directive that outlined deficiencies in some models, according to The New York Times. Earlier, the charter service that owns the Legacy had said it believed the transponder was subject to the AD. The directive, which takes effect Oct. 17, noted that some Honeywell transponders can erroneously go into standby mode if the flight crew takes longer than five seconds to change the ATC code. More...

AS INVESTIGATION OF MIDAIR PROCEEDS, INTENSE EMOTIONS
The tenor of the investigation, and the accusations against the pilots, have raised concerns about accuracy and fairness. "We call on the Brazilian government to stay strong in the face of immense public pressure and continue to respect the integrity of the investigation and not rush to judge the various players in this accident," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, in a news release last week. American attorneys representing victims' families have said they will conduct their own investigation. "Official reports often suffer long delays, and official investigations often include manufacturers and others who could potentially be held responsible," lawyer Lexi Hazam told The Associated Press. Brazilian authorities have said the Legacy jet was assigned to fly at FL360. The collision took place at FL370. More...

THE ECLIPSE LAWSUIT
Late last month, Swiss aviation startup Aviace filed suit against Eclipse Aviation, saying the Albuquerque-based aircraft manufacturer delayed and then canceled its order for 112 Eclipse 500s at a price of $1.045 million apiece. When Aviace placed the fleet order for the very light jets in May 2002, it said it planned to offer the aircraft through a jet club scheme, with the Eclipse 500s to be used for point-to-point, on-demand private jet travel, at attractive prices, throughout Europe. Aviace says it later shelved this business plan due to delays in the aircraft program, and last year decided it would sell some of its Eclipse 500 positions for nearly a half-million-dollar per airplane profit (Eclipse currently prices the jet at $1.52 million), putting Aviace in direct competition with Eclipse Aviation. And that, according to Aviace, is where the trouble began. More...

REPORT SHOWS ENGINE PROBLEMS IN MOONEY CRASH
A recently released NTSB factual report on the May 23 crash of South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer's Mooney M20E says the Lycoming engine had flown just 20 hours since a recent overhaul, and suggests that some bolts may have been incorrectly installed. The piston single was halfway down the runway at a private airstrip near Blacksburg, S.C., when power began to drop, according to passenger John Leonhardt, who holds a commercial pilot certificate. Bauer said there wasn't room left on the runway to abort, so he took off. The Mooney collided with trees and power lines. Both men suffered serious injuries, and the airplane was destroyed in a post-crash fire. The NTSB report indicates that at least two bolts securing an engine induction tube were a quarter-inch too short and had vibrated loose. More...

MORE AIR TRAFFIC? NO PROBLEM, SAYS CHEW
The FAA's Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is preparing to make the necessary changes to handle predicted increases in air traffic over the next two decades, says Chief Operating Officer Russell Chew. "It isn't about being the best and the brightest," he told aviation industry executives last Thursday, at the Aerospace Industries Association's civil aviation council meeting. "It's about being able to change." Chew stressed that the ATO needs to pursue a single "revolutionary" goal, and avoid spending years developing programs that will be obsolete by the time they're done. "Whatever you build, you have to have the future in mind," he said. More...

FLYING WITH GOOGLE 3-D
Google's 3-D maps of the Earth are proving useful in the aviation world. Dispatchers who work with firefighting airplanes for the U.S. Forest Service are incorporating the 3-D maps into their flight-following system, and they say it works great. Linda Naill, an aircraft dispatcher at the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center in Minden, Nev., uses the Google system to manage up to 20 aircraft at a time. "When I put a [temporary flight restriction] in place, I can really see if I'm impacting someone, and if someone violates it, we can easily figure that out," she told Government Computer News (GCN). The software helps avoid air-traffic conflicts and makes it easier to coordinate aircraft converging on the fire from different directions, according to GCN. Others also have found uses for the maps. More...

RESEARCHERS WORK ON MORPHING AIRCRAFT
It's a simple idea: If a wing could change shape in flight, it could do things that our rigid wings can't do. The Wright brothers attempted it with wing warping. We use the same idea when we employ flaps and ailerons, and some military aircraft have variable-geometry wings that can sweep back and change aspect ratio in flight. This week, the University of Dayton was awarded a $580,000 federal contract to further the development of "morphing" aircraft. The researchers will evaluate flexible-skin concepts that would enable wings to change shape, develop better simulations, and try to find ways to use devices within the wing skins to recover or "harvest" energy as the wings move. More...

CESSNA PILOT CHARGED WITH COCAINE SMUGGLING
A pilot from Calgary, Alberta, was indicted last week in California for allegedly carrying about 300 pounds of cocaine, worth some $30 million, aboard a Cessna 340 headed from San Diego to British Columbia on Sept. 27. The pilot, Daniel Raymond LeClerc, 35, was arrested when he landed to refuel at an airport in a small northern California town. According to the Calgary Sun, California narcotic task force agents received a tip that a large drug shipment was en route via a Cessna twin that would be stopping to refuel at Montague Airport. More...

ON THE FLY...
The new Airbus CEO quit after just three months on the job...
Watch for two special editions of AVwebBiz from NBAA next week...
Daniel Webster College will raffle off a free online MBA...
Final report on Helios 737 crash is completed...
FAA tells controllers they can't go out for lunch...
SJ30 deliveries delayed due to problems with wing installation...
Popular Mechanics honored Burt Rutan for Breakthrough Leadership...
Special from Sam's Club... buy a Citation Mustang jet...
Operation Migration again leading endangered cranes to winter home. More...

AVWEB'S NEWSTIPS ADDRESS ...
Our best stories start with you. If you've heard something that 130,000 pilots might want to know about, tell us. Submit news tips via email tonewstips@avweb.com. What have you heard? More...

NEW ARTICLES AND FEATURES ON AVWEB
MAINTENANCE

Aircraft Tire Selection and Maintenance
Tires don't get the respect they deserve. Most folks just say that they are "round, black, and dirty." The reality of the situation is quite different. More...

AUDIO NEWS
AVweb posts audio news on Mondays, plus a new in-depth interview each Friday. Check AVweb's audio news index to hear the news straight from the horse's mouth.

Find exclusive interviews featuring Cessna's Jack Pelton on his company's LSA, TCM president Bryan Lewis, NATCA president John Carr, New Piper CEO Jim Bass, Hal Shevers for Sporty's Pilot Shop, Light Sport guru Dan Johnson, Excel Jet's Bob Bornhofen, Adam Aircraft's Joe Walker, FAA administrator Marion Blakey, Cirrus Design's Alan Klapmeier and more. AVweb's Podcast index, is online, now. You'll hear things you won't find anywhere else.

AVWEB'S BUSINESS AVFLASH
HAVE YOU SIGNED UP yet for AVweb's NO-COST twice monthly Business AVflash? Reporting on breaking news, Business AVflash also focuses on the companies, the products and the industry leaders that make headlines in the Business of Aviation. Business AVflash is a must read. Watch for a Business AVflash regular feature, TSA WATCH: GA IN THE "SPOTLIGHT". Sign up today at http://www.avweb.com/profile/ More...

FBO OF THE WEEK: DIXIE CHOPPER AIR

For local prices, enter your U.S. ZIP Code or Airport Identifier: Fuel prices provided weekly by AirNav, based on prices from the past 2 weeks. Changes are relative to last week.

AVweb's "FBO of the Week" ribbon goes to Dixie Chopper Air at K4I7 in Greencastle, IN.

AVweb reader Bruce Cameron offered comments and a few reasons to stop by.

"Stopped twice in the last month (X-C in my Bonanza Coast to Coast R/T) Excellent service and prices, Great restaurant and 12 guest suites overlooking the runway. What else could a pilot/passengers ask for?."

Keep those nominations coming.For complete contest rules, click here.

AVweb is actively seeking out the best FBOs in the country and another one, submitted by you, will be spotlighted here next Monday!

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: HOW MANY HOURS DID YOU LOG WITH YOUR INSTRUCTOR THIS YEAR?
This week, AVweb would like to know how much training time you got in with an instructor over the last year. PLUS: How many hours did our Instrument-Rated pilots log in the last 12 months? More...

PICTURE OF THE WEEK
With 142 photos submitted, this week's "POTW" was an especially tough call!  We managed to winnow the pile down to 40 really outstanding photos and then, through perseverance, to a mere fifteen photos.  When we looked at the names on those 15, we discovered some duplication, which gave us just the excuse we needed to trim our stack down to a manageable 10 photos.  (Whew!  That's still plenty!) One of our multiple contributors this week was Jeffrey Austin Randall of Clyde, Texas, who had three photos in our Top 15.  While it may have broken our hearts to leave out his Thunderbird photo, we think you'll enjoy the one we chose as "Picture of the Week."  Naturally, Jeffrey will receive an official AVweb baseball hat for his contributions — and an equally official encouragement to keep going to air shows and taking pictures!

Want to see your photos here? Submit them for consideration, and each week we'll run the best of the best in our Thursday AVwebFlash newsletter.  If your photo is chosen as the "Picture of the Week," we'll even send you an AVweb hat as a token of our appreciation. More...

AVwebFlash is a twice-weekly summary of the latest news, articles, products, features, and events featured on AVweb, the internet's aviation magazine and news service.

Today's issue was written by news writer Mary Grady (bio).

Click here to send a letter to the editor. (Please let us know if your letter is not intended for publication.)

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