Injured On An Airplane?

Republished from: StaffordCountySun.com

Written by: Reed Williams 

LOUISA — Witnesses saw smoke coming from the airplane and noticed that it “didn’t sound right” just before it plunged to the ground, killing the pilot and igniting a house, an investigator said following the incident.

Investigators spent time sifting through the wreckage of the March 4 crash along U.S. 33 in the town of Louisa. The National Transportation Safety Board is in the early stages of a probe that could last from six months to a year, said Robert Gretz, a senior air safety investigator for the agency.

The Cessna T303 Crusader, loaded with 148 gallons of fuel, turned sideways and crashed vertically into the ground beside the house in the 100 block of Jefferson Highway, Gretz said. The crash occurred about 12:45 p.m.

Moments earlier, the plane had left Freeman Field airport a quarter-mile away after stopping to refuel. The homeowner was in the basement of the house when the plane struck, and he emerged unscathed.

Friends and a family member identified the pilot as James “Jay” Youngquist, a Reston resident in his 60s who had flown airplanes for four decades. His passengers had included former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

Youngquist left Manassas Regional Airport shortly before noon and stopped at Freeman Field on his way to Danville, where he planned to umpire a baseball game at Averett University.

“He was doing the two things he loved most, which is flying his airplane, and he was on his way to umpire a baseball game,“ his wife, Kathryn Youngquist, said during a brief phone interview.

During Kaine’s 2005 campaign for governor, Youngquist flew him to several campaign events.

“I am deeply saddened by the news of James Youngquist’s passing,“ said Kaine, who is chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“Jay was a calm and caring person who loved to fly, and I know he will be truly missed by all who knew him. My thoughts and prayers are with his family as they manage through this terrible time.“

Kathryn Youngquist said her husband also is survived by his son from his first marriage, Steve Youngquist, and by Kathryn’s two sons, Tyler and Eric Waldron.

http://www2.staffordcountysun.com/scs/news/state_regional/article/witnesses_saw_smoke_before_fatal_plane_crash/53601/

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WRITTEN BY: SAMANTHA ABERNETHY

Reprinted from: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOULDER, Colo. — Investigators plan to talk to other pilots to determine whether they heard any communications between two small planes just before an in-flight collision in Colorado killed all three people on board both planes.

With no black box data, investigators are relying heavily on video, photos and witnesses’ testimony to determine what led to the fiery crash Saturday, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jennifer Rodi said Sunday.

The crash occurred about 1:30 p.m. Saturday near the Boulder Municipal Airport when a southbound Cirrus SR20 collided with a westbound Piper Pawnee that was towing the glider, causing the “immediate disintegration and explosion of both airplanes,” Rodi said.

The pilot of the glider was able to cut loose just before the collision and fly to safety.

The Boulder County Coroner’s Office said Sunday that 25-year-old Alexander Howard Gilmer of Evergreen, Colo., was the pilot of the Piper Pawnee.

The coroner’s office tentatively identified the pilot of the Cirrus as 58-year-old Robert Matthews of Boulder, and the passenger as 56-year-old Mark A. Matthews of Englewood, Colo.

Young Kim said he and his girlfriend were walking out of her condo Saturday when they heard a loud boom.

“We looked up in the sky. We saw a glider and right next to it what looked like a big black ball of fire,” he said. “It looked at first like fireworks coming out of it.”

His girlfriend, Barb Maiberger, said, “You’re going, ‘This can’t be real.’ But it was real, and I knew something was wrong.”

Kim started running about a half-mile to the scene. “You could see a big smokestack coming out from the wreckage, and dozens of people running toward the scene hoping to rescue someone. As you got closer, you could actually smell the fumes from the jet fuel,” Kim said.

“I was just hoping maybe somebody survived,” he said.

Several witnesses have said they saw people plunging from the planes, but Rodi said it’s hard to tell whether they saw people or airplane parts falling.

An amateur video shot at the scene showed a plane on fire, floating to the ground trailing thick, black smoke and a parachute. Sheriff’s officials said the parachute was designed to deploy if a plane was disabled and was attached to the plane’s wreckage, not a person.

The crash spread debris over a 1 1/2 mile region of prairie. No one on the ground was hurt.

Three people were aboard the glider that managed to disconnect from the Piper Pawnee as the Cirrus clipped the tow line, just before the two planes collided, Boulder County sheriff’s officials said.

The pilot of the glider was Ruben Bakker, his mother-in-law Deborah Tjarks said. She said he saw the collision about to happen and released the glider and banked but still flew through the flames. Bakker did not return a call for comment.

The single-engine Cirrus left the Boulder airport with two people on board around 12:45 p.m. Saturday and was lost on radar for about 10 minutes, Rodi said.

Sheriff’s officials said the Piper Pawnee belonged to Mile High Gliding Inc. and had just taken off from the Boulder airport before the crash with the glider in tow.

The Cirrus had the capability to provide data from avionics, like a black box, but the avionics were destroyed in the crash and fire, Rodi said.

Investigators working as light snow fell Sunday planned to recover parts of the plane until dark, then start again Monday morning.

They will examine maintenance records, the pilots’ flight records and look at paint transfers on the plane parts to help determine what speeds the planes were traveling.

Rodi wouldn’t speculate on whether air congestion is a problem in the area.

In the airspace the planes were using, the pilots didn’t have to communicate with air traffic control towers but could have communicated with each other. Rodi said investigators would talk with other pilots who might have heard the pilots of the two planes talking with each other. It wasn’t immediately known how many other pilots were in the area at the time.

For original article follow the below link:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j7NlPfb5bBEAPTZEpc78dCKofNvwD9DNM7M80

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Written by Jack Healy

Published by The New York Times

An American Airlines flight carrying more than 150 people skidded off a rain-slicked runway as it landed in Jamaica Tuesday night, hitting a fence and plowing into a sandy embankment before it came to rest a few feet from the Caribbean Sea.

No one was killed in the accident, which knocked off the engines of the Boeing 737-800 and cracked its fuselage, but about 90 passengers were treated for minor injuries at hospitals around Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, according to a statement from Norman Manley International Airport.

Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines, said two of the 148 passengers had been admitted to the hospital for observation. Mr. Smith said he did not know the extent of their injuries, but said they were not life-threatening. Investigators from the United States and Jamaica have begun the work of trying to determine how the airplane overshot the runway, and whether rain and wind played a role in the crash, officials said.

The Federal Aviation Administration supplied a plane for six National Transportation Safety Board investigators and one F.A.A. safety investigator, which left Washington at about 9 A.M. The Safety Board referred reporters to the Jamaican Civil Aviation Authority, which, by international treaty, the Safety Board is assisting. It seemed likely, though, that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder would be decoded in the United States, probably by the Safety Board itself.

The flight originated from Washington, D.C., then stopped in Miami before taking off at about 9 p.m. for Kingston.

Photographs from the scene Tuesday night show distraught-looking passengers being wheeled through the airport and into hospitals, some holding towels and shirts to their heads, others with cuts and bruises on their faces.

In interviews with Jamaican newspapers, passengers said the plane, American Airlines flight 331, landed in pouring rain after a turbulent flight from Miami. Some passengers clapped as the plane touched down at 10:22 p.m., they said, but then it started skidding.

“The plane crashed and broke almost in front of me,” one passenger, Naomi Palmer, told the Jamaica Observer.

Passengers started screaming as the plane slid down the runway, crossed a road, smashed through a perimeter fence and then crashed into a sandy embankment, according to the passengers’ accounts. The lights went out, and suitcases and bags popped out of the overhead bins and fell onto passengers.

“We just buckled and bumped,” another passenger, Natalie Morales-Hendricks told NBC’s Today show. “It was like being in a car accident. People were screaming. I was screaming, covering my face and hands, and the next thing you know, we’re at a standstill.”

The flight’s six crew members — who were not seriously injured — helped the passengers make their way off the plane through the emergency exits, and into the rain.“When I came off the aircraft I saw that we were about 10-15 feet from the sea and boulders, so I walked on the beach to the road, where we were picked up by a bus,” Robert Mais, a passenger, told the Jamaican Gleaner newspaper.

Mr. Smith of American Airlines said both engines had come off and that the fuselage had cracked in two places. Passengers told Jamaican newspapers that they could feel rain inside the cabin once the plane came to a halt.

American Airlines would not name the captain and first officer, but said that both were experienced in this aircraft. The captain had nearly 2,700 hours as a captain on the Boeing 737, and the first officer, more than 5,000 hours in that job on that plane, airline officials said.

Airline officials said Tuesday was the first day of work for the pilots in a flight sequence that was supposed to last several days. They took the airplane from Reagan National Airport, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., to Miami, departing at 3:37 P.M., seven minutes behind schedule, and then from Miami to Kingston.

Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said that he had heard reports that the captain had suffered a minor injury to the arm or wrist, but that none of the cockpit crew or cabin crew appeared to have been seriously injured. “I suspect at minimum they had bumps and bruises like everyone else,” he said.

The airline sent a plane from its Dallas base after midnight, with support personnel. Boeing, which built the plane, also sent representatives to Kingston.

For the original article please follow the below link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/world/americas/24jamaica.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=jamaica%20&st=cse

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Written by: MATTHEW L. WALD

Published by: The New York Times

WASHINGTON — After radio contact was finally re-established with the Northwest Airlines plane that flew 150 miles past its destination last month, a controller twice asked the pilots why they had stopped answering radio calls, according to transcripts and audio files released Friday by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Northwest 188, do you have time to give a brief explanation of what happened?” asked a controller at the Minneapolis Center, which was handling airspace over Eau Claire, Wis.

“Just cockpit distractions, that’s all I can say,” said a crew member, according to the transcript, which puts an asterisk next to “just,” indicating that transcription of the word is uncertain because of audio quality.

Six and a half minutes later, after giving the crew instructions on which landing pattern to use, the controller asked, “Is there any way you can elaborate on the distraction?”

“We’re just dealing with some company issues here, and that’s all I can tell you right now at this time,” the pilot responded, with the F.A.A. again indicating that some of the transcript is uncertain. Such uncertainties are common in air-to-ground transcripts.

The crew members — Capt. Timothy B. Cheney, 53, of Gig Harbor, Wash., and First Officer Richard I. Cole, 54, of Salem, Ore. — said later that they had been using their laptops to figure out how to use new software for submitting work schedule requests.

Northwest was acquired by Delta Air Lines last year, and employees have been transferring to various Delta procedures; Mr. Cole was trying to explain the program to Mr. Cheney, they said.

The transcript shows that the controller who initially made contact with the plane, after a 79-minute gap in communication, said, “I just have to verify that the cockpit is secure.”

“It is secure and we got distracted, we were, ah,” said the pilot, followed by some unintelligible words and apparently the phrase, “never heard a call and we just … ”

Another recording, made by the cockpit voice recorder, is with the National Transportation Safety Board, which has not said if it will release a transcript. A board spokeswoman, Bridget Serchak, said Friday that the board intended to publish a docket in the case by the end of the year, which would be unusually swift. The docket could include a transcript or a summary of the transcript.

The board is investigating the event in a catch-all category of “other concerns.” That is because the incident, while troubling from a safety standpoint, resulted in no injuries or damage beyond burning some extra jet fuel. The North American Aerospace Defense Command monitored the situation but did not launch fighters.

The F.A.A. classified the incident as a “pilot deviation,” the same classification used when a pilot flies at the wrong altitude. But the agency still revoked the pilot licenses of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Cole. The two have appealed; their case will be heard by an administrative law judge of the safety board, probably within the next few months. The safety board functions as an appeals court for F.A.A. decisions.

It is not clear what information is on the cockpit voice recorder, since the model carried on that airplane, an Airbus A320, captures only the last 30 minutes of conversation, and that includes some time on the ground, before the engines are turned off.

The first two controllers to talk to the plane after the long gap both asked about fuel. “We’re good on fuel,” a crew member responded. The plane was carrying more than two hours’ worth of fuel, the crew said.

The flight, from San Diego to Minneapolis on Oct. 21, carried 144 passengers and 3 flight attendants. Despite numerous efforts from the ground, documented in the transcripts released Friday, it was a flight attendant who finally caught the pilots’ attention, by using the onboard phone system to ask when they would be descending.

The transcripts and audio files released Friday do not change the outline of what occurred, but do give some feeling for the mood of those involved. Controllers in Minneapolis asked other Northwest flights in the vicinity of Flight 188 to tune their radios to the Denver frequency, the last one that Flight 188 had used, to ask the pilots to report in. All of this is interspersed with routine communications with other airplanes.

CNN said the carrier admits the flight’s crew did not respond correctly to warnings the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 turboprop was going into an aerodynamic stall nor did it finish checklists or follow “sterile cockpit” rules that ban unnecessary conversation.

“Loss of situational awareness and failure to follow Colgan Air training and procedures” were what caused the crash, the company reportedly said, adding that Capt. Marvin Renslow — whom it was revealed after the crash had failed three pilot tests — “was not truthful (about the tests) on his employment application.”

CNN said that Colgan in the report rebutted critics who said low pay led crew members to live far from their home bases, contributing to fatigue, asserting that Renslow had 27 hours between flights.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/12/15/Colgan-Pilot-errors-led-to-plane-crash/UPI-89521260881715/

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Published by The New York Times

Written by Matthew L. Wald and Liz Robbins 

AMHERST, N.Y. — The crew of the plane that crashed near Buffalo on Thursday night discussed a “significant ice buildup” on the wings and windshield as the aircraft descended through light snow and mist, according to the flight data and voice recordings recovered from the scene of the accident that killed all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

In a late afternoon news conference, Steven Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board, who is acting as spokesman for the crash investigation, shared the chilling, technical details of the final minutes of Continental Flight 3407 as it prepared to land at Buffalo International Airport, which federal investigators gleaned from listening to the tapes on Friday.

In the final minute of the flight from Newark Liberty International Aiport, Mr. Chealander said the pilots apparently tried to abort the landing, but the plane violently pitched and rolled and seconds later crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb six miles from the airport.

“The crew commented at 16,000 feet that they noticed it was rather hazy and requested to descend to 12,000 feet, and shortly after that request, they were cleared to 11,000,” he said. “Around that time, the crew discussed significant ice buildup, on the windshield and leading edge of the wings.”

He said that the de-icing system had already been in the on-position when the crew discussed the ice on the plane. The plane continued its descent, and the crew lowered the landing gear with a minute left on the tape.

Forty seconds later, the pilots extended the flaps, the moveable panels on the rear edge of the wings that allow a plane to maintain lift as it slows. But within seconds of extending the flaps, the plane experienced “severe pitch and roll excursions,” meaning that the nose pointed up and down and the wings wagged from side to side, said Mr. Chealander.

“After that,” he said, “the crew attempted to raise the gear and flaps just before the end of the recording.”

Mr. Chealander, a former airline captain, emphasized that the board was in a “fact-gathering stage” and would not analyze the data now. However, the sequence he described is consistent with previous crashes caused by icing.

There is no indication so far that the weather was unusual for Buffalo in February. Visibility around the airport was three miles, with snow and mist. “That’s icing conditions,” Mr. Chealander said.

The airplane, a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 with two turboprop engines and room for 74 passengers, is certified for flight into “known icing conditions.” But when the pilots change the shape of the wings, by moving the flaps or other controls, sometimes buildups of ice that were not a factor in an earlier configuration are suddenly exposed to the passing wind and make the plane uncontrollable.

The flight data recorder was unusually comprehensive, measuring 250 different data points at frequent intervals, including use of the anti-icing system, but it did not record whether that system actually worked. On the Dash 8, a turboprop, the anti-icing system consists mostly of rubber, tire-like pneumantic “boots,” said Mr. Chealander. These “boots” inflate and shrink, breaking off accumulations of ice from the forward edges of the wings.

While investigators in Washington continued to comb through the tapes for causes of the crash, investigators on the ground were searching for clues from the aircraft and for remains of the victims.

Everyone aboard the plane — including 44 passengers, a crew of 4 and an off-duty airline employee — and one person in a house destroyed by the plane was killed, said Chris Collins, the Erie County executive.

Two others in the house, a 57-year-old woman and her 22-year-old daughter, suffered minor injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were treated and released, officials said.

Among those on the flight was Alison L. Forges, a historian and human rights advocate who documented the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and investigated related issues in Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Emma Daly, communications director of Human Rights Watch  in New York City.

Also on the flight was Beverly Eckert , the widow of Sean Rooney, a Buffalo native who died at the World Trade Center in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ms. Eckert was on her way to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday, and had planned to take part in the presentation of a scholarship award at Canisius High School that she had established in his honor, The Buffalo News reported.

Ms. Eckert met President Obama last week at the White House, along with other relatives of people killed in the 2001 attacks or the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

Speaking at the White House late Friday morning, Mr. Obama said that Ms. Eckert “was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead.”Continental Airlines said the pilot of the flight, Continental Connection Flight 3407, was Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47, from Lutz, Fla.; the first officer was Rebecca Shaw; flight attendants were Matilda Quintero and Donna Prisco; and the off-duty employee traveling on the flight was Capt. Joseph Zuffoletto.

The flight was operated by Colgan Air under contract to Continental, and it has been using that type of plane since February 2008.

Among those on the flight was Maddy Loftus, 24, from Parsippany, N.J., who was traveling to a reunion of the women’s ice hockey team at Buffalo State College, said Jeff Ventura, the sports information director at the school. Ms. Loftus was the first girl on the Parsippany Hills High School boys’ ice hockey team, before playing forward for Buffalo State from 2002 to 2004, and then at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota.

Her father, Mike, flew for years as a pilot for Continental Airlines, according to several news reports.

Two members of Chuck Mangione’s band, Coleman Mellett, a guitarist, and Gerry Niewood, a saxaphonist, also were among the victims, according to the Associated Press.

In Buffalo, employees at the 600-person office of Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor, Jack Martin, a spokesman for the company, confirmed that four colleagfues had died in the crash, but he declined to release their names.

The death of Cantor Susan Wehle, from Temple Beth Am in Williamsville, N.Y, was confirmed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo. According to the Temple’s Web site, she had in 2006 recorded a CD of her work, “Songs of Hope and Healing.”

Clay Yarber, 62, a Vietnam veteran who had twice survived helicopter accidents during the war, also died in the crash.

“That is one of the bitter ironies of all this for us,” a former wife, Michele Keratsis, said in a telephone interview. She said that after his service in Vietnam, “he was not happy to get on a plane at anytime.”

At a command center where officials gathered after the accident, Chris Kausner told CNN that his sister, Ellyce Kausner, was on the flight. He said she was connecting from Jacksonville, Fla., where she was a law student. When a reporter asked Mr. Kausner how his family was taking the news, he said: “I heard my mother make a sound into the phone that I had never heard before. So, not good.”

An intense fire at the site of the crash, fueled by a natural gas leak, initially made it difficult for the investigators to retrieve the voice and data recorders, Mr. Chealander said. Fourteen investigators from the board are at work seeking the cause of the crash, he said at a news conference on Friday morning.

Tony Tatro, who lives near the crash site, told CNN that he was driving home when the plane passed about 75 feet overhead, with its nose pitched lower than normal and its wings tilted. The plane struck the ground moments later, he said.

The plane took off nearly two hours late from Newark Liberty Airport at 9:19 p.m. and crashed about 10:20 p.m. Eastern time, five minutes before it was due to land. David Bissonette, the emergency coordinator for the town of Clarence Center, told reporters around 4 a.m. that the plane had made “a direct hit” on the house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center.

“It’s remarkable that it only took one house,” he said. “It could have easily taken the whole neighborhood.”

Mr. Bissonette said the only piece of the plane that remained recognizable was the tail. The investigation, he said, would be “painstaking” because of the amount of damage to the plane and the house.

Mr. Collins said that about 12 nearby houses were evacuated after the crash and that a limited state of emergency had been declared.

Sandra Baker, who lives on Railroad Street, two blocks from the site of the crash on Thursday, said: “It was just like a huge great big crash, a boom.”

Both of her sons, volunteer firefighters, went to the scene.

“There was this banging sound” before the crash, she said. It was followed by a boom, then a dark cloud and flames and the smell of fuel and fire.

Another woman who lives nearby described the sound before the crash as “a loud roar over my house.”

“It was like the whole house shook,” said the woman, Jennifer Clark, who also lives on Railroad Street. “Then there was silence.”

Ms. Clark said she looked out of her window and saw a ball of flames rising into the sky.

She woke up her husband and said, “I think a plane just crashed.”

Colgan, the operator of the plane, also flies feeder routes for US Airways and United Airlines. Colgan’s Web site said the airline operates about 50 aircraft, including 15 of the Q400 model, and recently reached an agreement with Continental to add 15 more aircraft. Colgan, which has flown for Continental since 1997, is owned by Pinnacle Airlines Corporation, based in Memphis. Pinnacle has about 6,000 employees around North America, 1,800 of them in Memphis.

The last fatal crash involving a scheduled carrier in the United States was a ComAir regional jet in Lexington, Ky., in August 2006. The crew attempted to take off from a runway that was too short; 47 passengers and 2 of the 3 crew members were killed.

During the day on Thursday, Continental posted a notice on its Web site that its operations would be affected by the winter storm on the East Coast, including the Buffalo and New York City areas.

The storm caused delays of up to five hours on arrivals at Newark Liberty International Airport  on Thursday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. That was unusual even for that airport, which routinely has some of the worst delays of any destination in the country.

Even by Friday, the F.A.A.’s Web site still showed delays at Newark of three hours and 50 minutes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/nyregion/13crash.html

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By Matthew L. Wald, New York Times

The National Transportation Safety Board said it would investigate the landing before dawn on Monday of a Delta Air Lines flight from Rio de Janeiro to Atlanta on a taxiway at the Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, rather than on the parallel runway to which it had been assigned. There was no traffic on the taxiway at the time, so the plane, a Boeing 767 with 193 people on board, landed without incident. But such landings create the chance of runway collisions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22brfs-PLANELANDSON_BRF.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=plane&st=cse

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By JOAN LOWY (AP)

WASHINGTON — The air traffic controller banters and chuckles, engrossed in a teasing phone call with a giggling friend, unaware that two aircraft are on a collision course over New York’s Hudson River.

The audio recording of their conversation, which otherwise would have been forgotten workplace joshing, stands as a record of the moments before a small plane and a tour helicopter collided, killing nine people. The recording was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press.

The controller, who was not identified, has been placed on administrative leave along with a supervisor pending an investigation of the Aug. 8 crash.

As the controller chatted on the phone, he was unaware that disaster loomed, until alerted too late by others controllers.

Amid his conversation, he can be heard directing air traffic. “Hold on real quick,” he tells his female friend at one point.

The controller and his friend, who worked at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, laughed about her finding the carcass of a cat near the airport and about her efforts to dispose of it. The controller told her he had watched the scene through binoculars from the control tower, and they joked about cooking the cat on a barbecue grill.

“Oh, my God, yeah, it was pretty bad,” she said.

“Did it smell? It couldn’t have smelled. It ain’t been there that long,” he said.

After he was unable to make radio contact with the pilot ultimately involved in the crash, the controller tells his friend: “Damn … Let me straighten this stuff out.” Then he hung up, four seconds before the collision.

Transcripts of the conversation were published previously, but FAA had refused to release the 29-minute audio recording.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, has said the controller had handed off responsibility for guiding the plane to controllers at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport seven seconds before the helicopter appeared on his radar screen. The helicopter had just lifted off from a helipad on the New York side of the river.

The pilot, Steven Altman, 60, of Ambler, Pa., apparently misheard the controller when he directed Altman to contact controllers in Newark and gave him the radio frequency. NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman told a congressional hearing last month that Altman read back the wrong radio frequency to the controller but was never corrected.

Newark controllers noticed the imminent crash on their radar, but could not reach the pilot. Nor could the Teterboro controller.

“He’s lost in the hertz,” the Teterboro controller said, a note of frustration in his voice.

Four seconds later the collision occurred, although it took controllers a moment to realize what had happened. The small plane collided with the tour helicopter, sending both aircraft hurtling into the river. All three people aboard the plane and a pilot and five Italian tourists aboard the helicopter were killed.

“Newark, Teterboro. Did you get him yet?” the Teterboro controller asked.

“Nope,” the Newark controller responded.

A few seconds later, a Newark controller said: “I think he went down in the Hudson.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i7snJnN8kUVlX69sAmaPg4IPi6aQD9B74MK80

A flight attendant was knocked over and a passenger injured in the incident aboard Flight 2871, which was forced to land in Louisville.

Joe Williams, a spokesman for Pinnacle Airlines, which operated the flight, said the region was getting “hammered” with severe weather.

He said the 50-seat regional jet took off from Knoxville, Tenn., about 4:25 p.m. and landed after the injuries were reported.

Williams described both injuries as “minor cuts and bruises.”

Encounters with rough air injure more people on airline flights than any other cause outside of fatal crashes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

On Monday, at least 28 passengers aboard Continental Flight 128 were injured as the plane flew from Rio de Janeiro to Houston.

The flight made an emergency landing in Miami. Four people were seriously injured, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesman Elkin Sierra said.

About eight serious turbulence accidents have happened each year since 1990, according to National Transportation Safety Board data.

Two people have died during that time, and about 10 people a year suffer severe injuries such as broken bones.

Tuesday’s Delta flight ran into trouble at 30,000 feet, about 15 miles southeast of Evansville, Ind., according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

Williams said the flight carried 24 passengers, two pilots and one flight attendant.

The area was getting pounded by a storm front that dropped 4.5 inches of rain in Louisville on Tuesday, setting a mark for the wettest August day on record, according to John Desjardins, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel. “It was awful,” he said.

The flight attendant was standing in the aisle “doing what flight attendants do” when she was knocked to the ground, Williams said.

She was transported to a hospital. Williams said the passenger was treated at the airport.

Williams said the passengers would be rerouted to Detroit and the pilots can resume flying Wednesday.

Contributing: Alan Levin

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-04-turbulence_N.htm