Plane Lidle Was Flying Has Been In Mishaps Before

The hurler and a flight instructor both perished when their Cirrus SR20 slammed into a luxury 50-storey condo in New York City.

Investigators will be looking for all kinds of possible reasons for what happened, including pilot error, some kind of glitch in the onboard navigation system or a separate problem with the plane itself.

The great irony is that the craft is among the first to be designed with a special safety feature to reduce the impact of such a catastrophic failure.

The SR20 comes with a built-in parachute – not for those on board, but for the plane itself. It allows the pilot to have it spring out above the vehicle and drift safely to the ground in the event of an engine failure.

It’s unknown if it would have made any difference in what happened in midtown Manhattan, but there’s no evidence the device was ever deployed.

The plane also comes with built in energy absorbing features to reduce the impact in the event of a crash. But the speed of what happened with Lidle’s craft may have made that a moot point.

The manufacturer and users are at a loss to explain the accident.

“These airplanes are just absolutely cutting edge in terms of how modern they are, and they ought to be extremely safe,” insists Mike Radomsky, president of the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association.

The SR20 carries up to four people, hits speeds of 257 kilometres an hour and costs about $280,000 US. Unlike other crafts, it uses a joystick on the side of the cockpit for steering instead of the more traditional wheel in front.

There are just under 3,000 of them in use, and they haven’t been without problems. On September 15th, another pilot was killed in one of the crafts after he reported icing conditions.

And the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is currently probing 12 other accidents involving the plane. Of those, six proved fatal, killing 13 people. Perhaps tellingly, in two of those mishaps, the pilots reported that their engines lost power.

There have already been more than a dozen lawsuits launched against the manufacturer of the plane, covering a variety of allegations. Some centre on pilot error, some on mechanical and alleged design flaws, while several combine both issues.

The special safety parachute hasn’t always deployed, and there are questions about the explosive mechanism that shoots it out of the vehicle at the time of the crisis.

Cirrus Design Corporation refused to comment on the accident or the airplane.

The small winged wonder did not carry a black box, which could prove a blow to investigators trying to figure out what caused the crash. 

Whatever it was, it happened quickly.

Lidle and his flight instructor took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey around 2:30pm Wednesday afternoon. They circled the Statue of Liberty, flew past lower Manhattan and over the East River.

Seconds after passing the famous 59th Street Bridge, the plane veered out of control and straight for the condo complex.

By about 2:50pm, Lidle and his passenger were both dead,  the building was on fire, and burning shards of the aircraft were showering down on the street below.