Plane Strikes Building, Mayor Shrugs
I'm surprised that nobody has commented yet on longtime amateur pilot Mayor Bloomberg's cavalier response to the Corey Lidle crash.
Bloomberg, again demonstrating the insouciance he made famous during the prolonged Queens blackout, wants to ban transfats but not low flying aircraft: "If you want to look at the numbers, we have very few accidents for an awful lot of traffic," he said. "Every time you have an automobile accident, you're not going to go and close the streets or prohibit people from driving."
Taking the art of ignoring the obvious a step farther was Chris Dancy, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, who almost bragged that small planes "are simply incapable of causing the kind of catastrophic damage that terrorists usually seek."
That would be a good thing, given that there are almost no restrictions on planes coming awfully close to New York City's buildings and people. Small aircraft flying under 1,100 feet (lower, that is, than the Empire State Building) are allowed to fly over most of the East and Hudson rivers without filing a flight plan, contacting air traffic controllers or even inspecting luggage.
"If there had been a powder released over Midtown Manhattan or the Upper East Side, it could've infected hundreds, if not thousands of individuals just by simply dumping the powder out of the side of a fixed-wing aircraft," said security expert George Bauries.
Former NTSB chairman Jim Hall asked how a plane could get so close to a New York City building after 9/11: "We're under a high alert, and you would assume that if something like this happened, people would have known about it before it occurred, not after."
Other New York politicians have addressed these concerns. Senator Schumer has called for closing the Hudson River approach to the city and requiring low-flying aircraft to submit a flight plan before entering New York airspace, and his protégé, Rep. Anthony Weiner, former and likely future mayoral candidate, and a Member of the House Homeland Security Task Force, has called for banning most low-altitude flights over the island and for a ban on all civilian helicopter traffic throughout the city.
Then there's the response from Mayor Daley, who's already been rebuffed in his calls for a no fly zone over Chicago:
"It's harder to get on a [commercial] airplane than get in a single-engine plane or two-engine plane and fly anywhere in the United States," Daley said. "Now think of that. And we're supposed to protect America.""How can a plane fly down the Hudson or East River close to the United Nations and no one knows about it?" the mayor asked.
"What happens now with insurance on high-rises? Does the federal government [say] `You have to triple your insurance per tenant in order to protect your high-rises?' That affects development in major cities."
Mayor Bloomberg?
Comments
Fred,
The Mayor is completely tone deaf to issues that don't peak his interest. I guess we can add the security of New Yorkers to that list.
Posted by: Micah Kellner, Democratic State Comitteeman 65th AD Upper East Side, Yorkville & Roosevelt Island | October 13, 2006 02:11 PM
Schumer and Weiner are, as always, grandstanding. Why if this is so near and dear to them, has neither introduced legislation addressing this? They're engaging in the worst sort of after-the-fact fingerwagging possible.
Posted by: H. Tuttle | October 13, 2006 05:36 PM