[Chooriwrocaxz]

^ That's because he wasn't familiar with the area.
He was from California.
Just a set of very unfortunate circumstances coming together.

Here's the New York Times:


Aviator Was Skilled, but in Unfamiliar Skies



Tyler Stanger in his plane at Brackett Field Airport in La Verne, Calif., in 2004.


By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and ALAN FEUER
Published: October 13, 2006

To those who knew him, Tyler Stanger was the real deal: an aviation enthusiast who had hung around a small private airport east of Los Angeles since he was 17 and become both a mechanic and a pilot, an unusual combination.

But Mr. Stanger’s passion for planes did not translate into swagger. As a pilot and a flight instructor, he was cool and meticulous, former students and friends said, a stickler for safety measures like checklists who seemed more mature than his 26 years.

Most of his work was in the wide-open skies of the American West. He and the Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle, also a Californian, had become friends, and that was one of the reasons why Mr. Lidle asked him to come east to help him fly his new single-engine Cirrus SR20 airplane back to California this week.

Still, for all his experience, it appears that Mr. Stanger had flown a loop around Manhattan and up the East River only once, according to a former student. Mr. Stanger took the stretch about two years ago after he purchased a Cessna 172 in the New York area to use for flight instruction.

“He told me that after he bought his plane, he flew the route around the Statue of Liberty and up the river,” recalled the student, Jason Paul, 23.

On Wednesday, he and Mr. Lidle were killed when the pitcher’s plane slammed into a 42-story building on the Upper East Side.

If this was Mr. Stanger’s second time up this section of the East River, then Mr. Stanger was traveling with little experience through a patch of urban air that many veteran New York City pilots say they make a point of avoiding.

They say that pilots try to keep from doing what Mr. Lidle’s plane did: turning left sharply between the east and west banks of the river in an attempt to avoid going into La Guardia Airport airspace.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday that the pair had told air traffic controllers they intended to make the left turn and that they were traveling at 112 miles per hour when last glimpsed on radar. The investigators said the plane had gone to 500 feet from 700 feet in roughly a quarter of a mile, but gave no suggestion as to why.

Investigators said they were not even sure who was flying the plane, a sporty four-seater.

Local pilots with experience traveling through New York City’s busy and tricky airspace said that Mr. Lidle’s plane appeared to have followed the rules when he turned left, but that they knew better alternatives: either pilots get clearance from La Guardia, which would not have been a problem on Wednesday; or just skip the East River altogether and go up the Hudson River; or request permission to turn right and make a U-turn that carries them over a sliver of Queens.

One pilot said that he would rather run the risk of receiving a citation by flying without permission through La Guardia airspace than attempt the left turn.

Pilots are allowed to fly without contact with air traffic controllers up the East River to Roosevelt Island’s northern tip in what is known as an “exclusion” devised to keep small craft away from larger craft and to reduce radio traffic with controllers in congested New York. To fly north past the island, a pilot needs to request the clearance from La Guardia.

Without a clearance, however, the pilot must make the 180-degree turn in the confined space above the river banks — a width of about 2,000 feet.
“It’s like a box canyon,” said Ken Nurenberg, who has flown in the New York area for 30 years, but has never flown in a fixed-wing aircraft up the East River. “You go in, but you have to turn around to get out. You’re not allowed off the river and it’s pretty narrow.”

Stanley Anderson, who owns AviateRight, a flight school in Farmingdale, N.Y., has flown the route 50 times, but always with a clearance to continue on from La Guardia. “I would never even try to do a 180,” he said. “No way.”

Mr. Anderson said he did not allow customers to fly the route because, as he put it, “there’s no room for error.” He added that if he even if he did not get clearance from La Guardia, if it was a question of safety, he would probably enter its airspace.

Other pilots said skilled aviators who understand local conditions should be able to handle the turn.

“It’s narrow, but it’s not difficult for somebody who’s aware of where he is and what sort of environment he’s operating in,” said Tom Haines, a pilot and the editor in chief of AOPA Pilot Magazine. “It’s the sort of thing where you’d just want to know where you are.”

Other pilots said they avoided the East River altogether, especially since the Hudson River is wider and does not have such tight restrictions on altitude. “I’ve done the Hudson for 30 years,” said Ilan Reich, a pilot, “but the East River, it’s low and there aren’t many options.”

Though Mr. Stanger may not have been familiar with the skies over New York City, he had rigorously studied aviation in all its different aspects.

“I saw this kid had a passion for airplanes and a talent for airplane maintenance,” recalled Robin Howard, president of Howard Aviation Inc., where Mr. Stanger started working when he was in high school.

In 2001, he graduated from Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., with an associate in science degree after majoring in commercial flight.

Three years later, Mr. Stanger received a bachelor’s degree in aviation management from Southern Illinois University under a program run in partnership with Mount San Antonio College.

He received his flight instructor’s license in September 2003.

Mr. Stanger started his own company, Stang-Air, in 2003 at Brackett Field in the San Gabriel Valley. But he still did delivery flights and some contract work for Howard Aviation. Through Stang-Air, he offered flight lessons and sightseeing flights from the airport.

Mr. Stanger had also been a corporate contract pilot for about a year, flying multiengine propeller planes and single-engine turbo propeller aircraft, which are similar to jets, according to Mr. Howard.

“He would be a guy I would want there in case things got tense. He seemed capable of handling all kinds of emergencies,” said Carl Colley, 57, a former student of Mr. Stanger’s. “He was very enthusiastic, but not a risk taker.”

Mr. Stanger, who once worked as a Mormon missionary for two years, was married with one child and another on the way.

“He was like a son to me,” Mr. Howard said, adding: “He was a great pilot. He could fly any plane you could ask him to. He was a natural.”


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company