Pataki Calls for Tighter Control Over City Airspace

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 12, 2006

Despite the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, private pilots have been allowed to fly above the Hudson and East rivers with little contact with air traffic controllers. Pilots are not even required to file a flight plan, a lawyer who is a former pilot said yesterday.

After Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle crashed a small aircraft into a Manhattan apartment building yesterday, the lax rules governing the air space straddling Manhattan are already coming under scrutiny.

Governor Pataki said yesterday that the Federal Aviation Administration would temporarily require all planes flying at less than 1,500 feet around the city to be authorized by air traffic control. He lauded that decision.

"Over five years after the events of September 11th, this tragic accident brings into sharp focus the need to gain greater control of the airspace around New York," Mr. Pataki said in a statement sent via e-mail.

While the airspace over Manhattan is tightly regulated, airplanes and helicopters are permitted to fly above the Hudson and East rivers at low altitudes, a lawyer, Robert Spragg, of the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, said. His firm specializes in litigation involving plane crashes.

The planes fly with minimal contact with air traffic controllers and do not need to register a flight plan, Mr. Spragg, also a former helicopter pilot with the Marine Corps, said. They fly according to "visual flight rules," he said, which means they navigate by eyesight, not with flight instruments.

Lidle and second person flying in the aircraft yesterday had not violated any flight rules as they flew north above the East River after circling the Statue of Liberty, the New York Times reported on its Web site yesterday.

Mr. Pataki said that the rules governing such flights should be reconsidered.

"I am formally requesting" that Homeland Security and FAA officials "undertake a comprehensive review of all the rules that apply to private general aviation flights in the vicinity of New York," Mr. Pataki said in the statement.

Another attorney at Kreindler, David Cook, said the current laxness of the rules undercuts efforts to protect the city against another terrorist attack by airplane.

"How do you stop an airplane flying down the East River" from turning towards a building? Mr. Cook asked during an interview yesterday. "What if that plane today was loaded with some type of a weapon? When he's at 42nd street it's too late."