No Survivors Found as 2 Aircraft Collide

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No Survivors Found as 2 Aircraft Collide

Robert Mecea/Associated Press

The scene along the Hudson River as rescue boats circle the area near the New Jersey shore line.


In midafternoon, the authorities said they had not recovered any survivors.

“This has changed from a rescue to a recovery mission,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a 3 p.m. news conference.

Witnesses said the airplane, a single-engine Piper PA-32R-300 that had taken off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and was flying south along the river, appeared to lose control as it banked steeply to the left and struck the Liberty Harbor Sightseeing Tours helicopter not far off the shoreline in Hoboken, N.J.

In dramatic scenes glimpsed by hundreds of joggers, bikers, strollers and apartment dwellers on both sides of the milewide river, the two aircraft appeared to break apart — a wing from the plane, and rotary blades from the chopper — and fell spinning into the Hudson opposite West 14th Street in Manhattan. Some described the collision as sounding like a quick roll of thunder, followed by an eerie silence.

“I saw the plane coming down and the helicopter coming across,” said Hilda Igartua, 53, of Union City, N.J., who was on the Hoboken waterfront. When the aircraft collided, the plane’s trajectory did not change, she said, but the helicopter came apart and spun down in pieces.

“It sounded like a cannon shot,” said a man who identified himself only as Jorge, 38, of Hoboken. “I thought it was thunder.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/continuous/09crash.html?hp