C-172 down at HPN - 2 fatalities

IMHO, you are a little too sensitive as to what you think the public
will think, UNLESS we're talking about an airport near which a political
movement is underfoot to close it. Most people in general circumstances
will forget the story in a few days. In any case, the bottom line is
that if we pilots were as perfect at flying as you wish reporters were
at reporting, there would be practically no accidents to report (these
being the relatively few pure mechanical failures), and therefore no
cause for your angst.

Andrew Gideon wrote:
RomeoMike wrote:

It doesn't take all that much training to recognize when a reporter is
willing to compromise his integrity by attempting to slant his article
toward an agenda.

Unfortunately, these days, it is rare to see an unslanted report,
regardless of the topic.

It's a shame it doesn't require more training to become a reporter.


RomeoMike wrote in
:

When I read posts critical of the knowledge of reporters I think one
of two scenarios: One, the poster has forgotten how much training it
took for him to get so "smart" and thereby figures the reporter and
anyone else should know as much as he does.

snip

Judah wrote:
It doesn't take all that much training to recognize when a reporter is
willing to compromise his integrity by attempting to slant his article
toward an agenda.

Yes, you only need to know how to read...


Matt

The reporter is young ("staff writer"), doesn't know aviation, is hostile to
it and is hostile to HPN. For what purpose would he try to make a tortured
connection between HPN's increased commercial activity and GA accidents? Why
else dredge up stats from the seventies and dust-off the airport's history
if not to imply that HPN has outlived its purpose?

He's also dusting off his editor's old press-kits from the come-lately
revisionist, not-in-my-back-yard nouveau riche disingenuous scumbags who
moved to the nuisance that they consider HPN and now want to get rid of it.

Hence the "noise abatement" for the oh-so-off-put weenies whose
sensibilities are offended if they hear the sound of an aircraft while
they're playing canasta and munching on "cah-shooos" whilst they sip their
gin martinis in their recently acquired McMansions. There's a load of them
that were recently built less than a quarter-mile from the Rwy 36
threshold - that's the ILS Rwy and the active about 75% of the time. The
developers placed them so close that I can see the gardeners taking a leak
while coming in for a touch-and-go.








wrote in message ...
What does the reporter say in the article that causes you to classify him
as an "assoholic?"

"R.L." wrote:

Here's a story from the Stamford Advocate along with the usual helping
of
assoholic reporter ignorance at the end:


--
Plane crash kills 2 near Greenwich border
By Michael Dinan
Staff Writer
April 24, 2005
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A flight instructor and his student were found
dead
in thick woods just beyond Greenwich's northwest corner yesterday
afternoon,
after the single-engine propeller plane they were flying crashed during
an
apparent attempt to land at Westchester County Airport, officials said.

"The plane was broken in half, it appeared to me, and there was fire,
with
two people trapped in burning flame," North Castle, N.Y., Police Chief
Robert D'Angelo said during a news conference last night at the
airport's
media center.

Airport officials identified the instructor as Isaac Negron of Hamden,
and
the student as Lev Naumov, 23, of Yonkers, N.Y. Negron's age was not
known
last night.

The Cessna 172 four-seater belonged to American Flyers, a flight
instruction
school based at the airport, said Lawrence Salley, Westchester County's
transportation commissioner.

The men had flown out of the airport shortly after noon yesterday, to
Albany, N.Y., and appeared to be returning to the airport, though their
arrival was not scheduled.

The Federal Aviation Administration tower, based at the airport, lost
radar
contact with the plane about 40 minutes before its smoldering remains
were
located by North Castle firefighters, said Anthony Sutton, commissioner
of
Westchester County's Department of Emergency Services.

The causes and times of the accident and deaths are not yet known. FAA
officials began investigating the crash yesterday, and National
Transportation Safety Board members are expected to join them today,
Salley
said.

The Cessna disappeared from the FAA's radar at 3:19 p.m., Salley said.
The
plane, which Salley said relayed no distress signals and whose pilot had
no
verbal contact with the air tower, was last seen on screen about a
quarter-mile from the airport runway. It was flying at 800 feet, which
Salley said is not unusually low for a plane attempting to land at the
airport.

A hotline transmission from local police went out at 3:29 p.m., by which
time Westchester County's emergency response teams had converged to
perform
a "grid type of search," Salley said. At 3:41 p.m., the FAA had
confirmed
that no other air towers were able to locate the plane, Salley said.

The burning remains, were discovered at 4:01 p.m. by firefighters who
smelled something burning in the woods near the intersection of Routes
22
and 120 in North Castle. Negron and Naumov were found dead inside the
plane,
D'Angelo said.

The Cessna 172 model was produced in 2001 and does not a have a "black
box,"
Salley said. Experts can sometimes use the voice recording device to
reconstruct an accident.

The plane crashed near, but did not contaminate, the Kensico Reservoir,
officials said. It was not clear last night who owned the property where
the
plane crashed. Officials said last night that they knew of no witnesses
to
the accident.

Six flights were canceled and two flights were delayed as a result of
the
crash, Salley said. Outbound services at the airport resumed at 5:20
p.m.
yesterday, but FAA officials halted inbound service, Salley said, to
"check
out (the airport's) instrument landing system."

Grief counselors had arrived at the airport last night to talk to
Negron's
and Naumov's families, Westchester County Police Commissioner Tom
Belfiore
said.

American Flyers runs 15 flight schools nationwide, according to the
company's Web site. Salley, Westchester's transportation commissioner
since
2000, said that he couldn't recall the company having a fatal crash
before.

The Westchester County Airport grew out of plans to defend New York City
during World War II, and has evolved slowly into a modern airport used
by
thousands of business and leisure travelers.

There have been numerous aviation accidents in the region since
commercial
operations expanded. Since 1974, 40 people have died and 20 people have
been
injured in 31 accidents after take-offs from and attempted landings at
Westchester County Airport.

Most recently, in June 2001, the pilot of a single-engine plane was
killed
when his Piper Saratoga crashed into the fog-shrouded woods off Bedford
Road
in backcountry Greenwich. The pilot had unsuccessfully attempted an
instrument landing at Westchester County Airport, about a half-mile from
the
crash site.

R.L. wrote:
Here's a story from the Stamford Advocate along with the usual helping of
assoholic reporter ignorance at the end:

Sounds completely cockeyed to me. Westchester is a controlled field, yet the
reporter states that the "pilot had no verbal contact with the air tower"?
Conditions were IMC, yet "their arrival was not scheduled"?

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

George Patterson wrote:

Sounds completely cockeyed to me. Westchester is a controlled field, yet
the reporter states that the "pilot had no verbal contact with the air
tower"? Conditions were IMC, yet "their arrival was not scheduled"?

The reporter thinks of "scheduled" as in part 121. If someone mentioned
"general aviation" to him, he'd probably want to interview the fellow (of
obvious import due to his high rank {8^).

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot hadn't
been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower after the
hand-off). It's been a couple of years since I ILSed into HPN, so I don't
know how early/late TRACON does the hand-off.

- Andrew

In article ne.com,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

George Patterson wrote:

Sounds completely cockeyed to me. Westchester is a controlled field, yet
the reporter states that the "pilot had no verbal contact with the air
tower"? Conditions were IMC, yet "their arrival was not scheduled"?

The reporter thinks of "scheduled" as in part 121. If someone mentioned
"general aviation" to him, he'd probably want to interview the fellow (of
obvious import due to his high rank {8^).

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot hadn't
been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower after the
hand-off). It's been a couple of years since I ILSed into HPN, so I don't
know how early/late TRACON does the hand-off.

Believe me, by the time he got to his final position he would have been
handed off long ago. Normally NY App does the handoff shortly before
clearing for the approach, certainly outside the HESTER (the outer
makrker/FAF). He went down less than a half mile from the threshold.

It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket. It was a pretty low day for a
student pilot to be shooting instrument approaches, in fact I have no
idea what they were doing out there that day. I can't imagine my
primary instructor allowing me out in such low weather.

In article
250420051652421759%bodhijunkoneeightyeightjunkatm ,
Tom Fleischman k
wrote:

Normally NY App does the handoff shortly before
clearing for the approach, certainly outside the HESTER (the outer
makrker/FAF).

DOH!!

That would be "after".

The damned ceiling couldn't have been more than 500 feet. Temp/dewpoint
spread was zero. Says something about American Flyers that it's taking a
primary student up shooting instrument approaches in low IMC .



"Tom Fleischman" k wrote in
message
news:250420051652421759%bodhijunkoneeightyeightjun ...
In article ne.com,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

George Patterson wrote:

Sounds completely cockeyed to me. Westchester is a controlled field,
yet
the reporter states that the "pilot had no verbal contact with the air
tower"? Conditions were IMC, yet "their arrival was not scheduled"?

The reporter thinks of "scheduled" as in part 121. If someone mentioned
"general aviation" to him, he'd probably want to interview the fellow
(of
obvious import due to his high rank {8^).

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot
hadn't
been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower after
the
hand-off). It's been a couple of years since I ILSed into HPN, so I
don't
know how early/late TRACON does the hand-off.

Believe me, by the time he got to his final position he would have been
handed off long ago. Normally NY App does the handoff shortly before
clearing for the approach, certainly outside the HESTER (the outer
makrker/FAF). He went down less than a half mile from the threshold.

It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket. It was a pretty low day for a
student pilot to be shooting instrument approaches, in fact I have no
idea what they were doing out there that day. I can't imagine my
primary instructor allowing me out in such low weather.

Tom wrote:

It's worth noting that the student was NOT an instrument student. He
was still working on his private ticket.

If that is truly the case, then it would seem more probably that the
instructor were flying the approach from the left seat. I cannot
imagine any student pilot being able to, nor a primary instructor
allowing the student to fly an approach in actual low IFR conditions.

--
Peter