Results tagged “tylerstanger”

The East 72nd Street building that a single-engine plane crashed into almost a year ago is "almost whole" again. The NY Times visited the Bel Aire at 524 East 72nd Street and found the facade patched up and cleaned, windows replaced and interior hallways with new wallpaper and carpeting. And once the scaffolding is removed, the building's canopy can be replaced.

Ilana Benhuri filed court papers in early August suing Melanie Lidle and Stephanie Stanger (the widow of Lidle's flight instructor Tyler Stanger, who was also killed in the crash) for unspecified damages related to the 2006 crash that killed Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor when the small airplane they were piloting flew into the side of a building on Manhattan's Upper East Side. 51-year-old Benhuri was badly burned during the incident, as the Cirrus aircraft crashed into the 30th floor at 524 E 72nd Sreet. Benhuri described the incident after she was released from the hospital, saying that the walls and windows "came just right into me and it threw me up in the air and threw me down in all the debris..." She also said that she was lucky to be alive.

Here is part two of our semi-chronological look back at the top stories this past year (here is part one):

The woman who was badly burned after the plane carrying Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger crashed into her 30th floor apartment finally left the hospital yesterday. Ilane Benhuri, who had the most serious burns among the people injured from the crash, had walked to New York Hospital with the help of her housekeeper immediately after the October 11 crash. She underwent operations and many skin grafts over the past month. After her release, Benhuri spoke to reporters yesterday about her ordeal:

Everything from outside, the windows and the walls and everything, with a big explosion, came just right into me and it threw me up in the air and threw me down in all the debris...

Continue reading "Plane Crash Survivor Says, "I’m so lucky to survive.""

Radar data indicate that the airplane was flying over the east side of Roosevelt Island prior to initiating a 180 degree turn. At this location, there would have been a maximum of 2100 feet clearance from buildings, if the full width of the river had been used. However, from the airplane's mid-river position over Roosevelt Island, the available turning width was only 1700 feet. The prevailing wind from the east would have caused the airplane to drift 400 feet toward the building during the turn, reducing the available turning width to about 1300 feet. At an airspeed of 97 knots, this turn would have required a constant bank angle of 53 degrees and a loading of 1.7 Gs on the airplane. If the initial portion of the turn was not this aggressive, a sufficiently greater bank angle would have been needed as the turn progressed, which would have placed the airplane dangerously close to an aerodynamic stall.

The NTSB hasn't officially determined that the plane stalled, but suspects that was what happened. The NTSB stressed, "We haven't concluded that wind was the cause of the accident. ... To say it's being blamed or that's the cause of the accident is premature."

Investigators have spent the hours after a plane, carrying Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor Tyler Stanger, crashed into an Upper East Side building gathering evidence from the street. Federal transportation investigators believe that the single engine Cirrus SR 20 was trying to make a U-turn when it turned left over the East River, based on something either Lidle or Stanger told an official at Teterboro Airport. According to radar, the plane had flown over the East River at an altitude of 700 feet and was at 500 feet a quarter mile north of 524 East 72nd Street.

Housekeeper Eveline Reategue was tidying her boss' 30th-floor apartment when a sudden explosion nearly knocked her off her feet.