'Where many recreational pilots fear to venture'
A Hub Blog friend who lives on Roosevelt Island is obviously stunned by the Cory Lidle tragedy and wonders, without being insensitive to his death, what the heck he or anyone else was doing flying a plane within the East River corridor. Take a look at this interactive graphic. It's almost mad for authorities to allow such flights. He had to have flown over the 59th Street Bridge and the famous tramway, then somehow dipped down into an urban canyon of buildings between Manhattan and Roosevelt, before curving west to hit a building. ... FYI: Though a resident of Roosevelt Island directly across the river from where the crash occurred, the Hub Blog friend was only a few blocks away from the condo building when it was hit -- picking up her children at a nearby school. She said there was debris, smoke, parents rushing to get their kids, emergency personnel etc. everywhere. All because a recreational pilot in this post 9/11 age went on a sightseeing tour?

Update -- Armchair Gen. Savin Hill writes in:

Regarding the Lidle incident, just keep in mind that corridor airspace has a 'floor' which is no doubt well above the height of any building. His plane could have fallen to the altitude where it impacted the building as the result of a stall or a stall/spin. A stall/spin would be consistent with some reports of the plane performing 'aerobatics' before collision with the building. In a stall/spin, you can do a complete nose-down roll and lose a lot of altitude before recovering straight and level flight.
-- Air Commodore Savin Hill (licensed private pilot)

I don't pretend for a second to be an expert on flying. So I defer to Air Commodore Savin Hill. But flying airplanes so close to Manhattan with so little margin of error strikes me as nuts -- and the margin of error here was clearly not enough. ...  ¶ 8:50 AM