2006 New York City Cirrus SR20 crash

On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed into the Belaire Apartments on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, United States, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42 UTC). The aircraft struck the north side of the building, causing a fire in several apartments that was extinguished within two hours.

Both people aboard the aircraft were killed in the accident: New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his certificated flight instructor Tyler Stanger. Twenty-one people were injured, including eleven firefighters. An apartment resident, Ilana Benhuri, who lived in the building with her husband, was hospitalized for a month with severe burns incurred when the post-impact fire engulfed her apartment.

The Cirrus SR20 aircraft, tail number N929CD, was owned by Lidle. On May 1, 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stated that the probable cause of the crash was pilot error. The NTSB was unable to determine which person was flying the aircraft at the time of the crash.

Flight

The aircraft departed from Teterboro Airport in Teterboro, New Jersey, at 2:29 pm EDT (18:29 UTC). With the Yankees' season having come to an end four days prior, Lidle planned to fly to Nashville, Tennessee, where he had a hotel room booked for the night, then to Dallas, Texas, and finally on to his home in California.

Radar measurements show that, immediately before the crash, Lidle's aircraft was flying at 112 mph (180 km/h) at 700 ft altitude in the East River VFR corridor, an area which former NTSB official Peter Goelz described as "very tricky" due to its narrow width and frequent congestion. The VFR corridor ends abruptly at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island. Aircraft must receive an air traffic control clearance to proceed beyond the boundaries of the corridor, or else make a sharp U-turn and return the way they came. Lidle's plane flew north along the corridor almost to the end before executing a turn and hitting the north face of the building along the river.

Crash

The airplane struck the Belaire, a 42-story condominium tower at 524 East 72nd Street, nose-first at approximately 30 stories above the ground. The plane hit the apartment owned by Dr. Parviz Benhuri and his wife Ilana, the latter of whom was seated in the room when the plane crashed and, thus, sustained fragmentation injuries and burns. Her housekeeper was also present and helped her escape. The engine landed in and set fire to the apartment of a woman who had suffered a previous freak accident—having been left comatose when a balloon at the 1997 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade knocked a piece of a lamppost onto her head—but the apartment was unoccupied at the time.

The aircraft's Ballistic Recovery Systems emergency parachute, designed to bring the small plane down safely from altitudes above 500 ft, was not deployed. The plane circled the Statue of Liberty before flying north up the East River and disappeared from radar near the Queensboro Bridge. It was flying under visual flight rules (VFR) and had attracted no special attention from air traffic controllers or NORAD before the crash. The aircraft took a hard U-shaped turn before it hit the building.