New York, NY – The federal authorities have baned low altitude flights along New York’s East River in the wake of the small plane that crashed into a building on the upper East Side of the city killing two.
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A-Rod OK after plane skids off runway
Officials say none of the seven people aboard were injured
By Mark Feinsand / MLB.com
Yankees Headlines
Barely 48 hours after Cory Lidle lost his life in a tragic plane accident, the Yankees had another scare on Friday afternoon about 3,000 miles away.
Alex Rodriguez was aboard a private jet that overran a runway at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., and was brought to a halt by an arresting system.
“I spoke to Alex,” his agent, Scott Boras, told The Associated Press. “He’s fine.”
Federal officials said that none of the seven people aboard were injured.
The Gulfstream G-II carried five passengers and two crew members, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement from Washington, D.C.
The twin-engine jet was stopped by an Engineered Materials Arresting System, a 200-foot long stretch of pavement injected with air bubbles designed to collapse under the weight of an aircraft as large as a Boeing 737 jet traveling as fast as 50 knots, airport spokesman Victor Gill said.
“It came to a pretty quick stop,” Gill said.
Damage to the aircraft was minor, the board said.
On Wednesday afternoon, Lidle’s four-seat, single-engine Cirrus SR20 crashed into a Manhattan high-rise building, killing the pitcher and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger. An NTSB investigation isn’t expected to be completed for up to a year.
Deborah Hersman, a spokesperson for the NTSB, said Thursday that the NTSB was looking for evidence that might show what was happening at the time of Lidle’s accident.
“We’re going to be looking at training, at qualifications. We have taken fuel samples, air traffic control tapes, radar data — all of this data is part of our investigation.”
An NTSB official was sent to investigate Friday’s incident, which took place around 11:35 a.m. PT. The board planned to retrieve the cockpit voice recorder, gather radar data and evaluate how well the arresting system worked.
The aircraft, registered to a Wilmington, Del., corporation, approached from the west and landed on one of the airport’s two runways. The runway was closed and reopened at 3:30 p.m. after the plane was moved, Gill said.
Bob Hope Airport, in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown Los Angeles, is used by seven airlines and private aircraft.
A Southwest Airlines jet skidded off a runway and crashed through a concrete barrier at the airport in 2000, injuring 43 passengers and the captain. The flight from Las Vegas went too fast and descended at a steep angle when it landed, according to a NTSB report. That jet ended up on a city street near a gas station.