I vividly recall the day I learned that a plane from my flight school had crashed, just over a year after I had last flown it. On April 30, 2004, my mother-in-law Sigi, and our friends Kanaan and Tobias, and I enjoyed a memorable flight in a state-of-the-art Cessna 172S, equipped with an autopilot and GPS (quite advanced for the time). We soared through the Hudson Corridor, with Manhattan stretching out beneath us. We made a low turn around the Statue of Liberty, affectionately known as “The Lady,” and then headed towards the Verrazano Bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn.
Tragically, the plane, which was being flown by an instructor, was overloaded and crashed on the beach at Coney Island. Below are some pictures from our beautiful flight, along with images of the crashed plane and the NTSB accident report.
My mother-in-law Sigi, and our friends Kanaan and Tobias, enjoying a late afternoon flight along the Hudson Corridor on April 30, 2004.
A little over a year later, a fatal accident occurred, claiming the lives of four people under initially unclear circumstances. It was later revealed that an instructor was conducting a so-called discovery flight in a fully loaded (with four persons) Cessna 172. The instructor was performing daring maneuvers at a very low altitude of 300 feet, including risky stunts like slow flying and steep turns, despite the lack of sufficient space below to recover from an accidental stall.
The NTSB report on the accident provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the tragedy. The irresponsible behavior of the instructor resulted in the tragic loss of four lives and the destruction of an otherwise beautiful aircraft.
