NEW YORK — When a small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River last week, it was only the second time in decades that crowded skies near Manhattan led to a midair crash.
But an Associated Press review of pilots’ safety reports found many more close calls in the same airspace in recent years. Almost all the incidents involved small aircraft flying at low altitude in an area were pilots pick their own routes and watch for conflicts without help from air-traffic controllers.
Pilots provided accounts of near misses through the Aviation Safety Reporting System.
A database of those reports reviewed by The Associated Press included at least 11 incidents filed since 1990 that described aircraft coming dangerously close over the Hudson.
Those reports involve only a tiny fraction of incidents within that corridor, and experts say most near misses, regardless of where they happen in the U.S., go unreported, meaning the actual number of close calls is probably much higher.
“I’m surprised we haven’t had more incidents,” said Chris Meigs, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who became familiar with the Hudson River airspace while flying for a commercial airline out of Newark, N.J. “It’s a really, really busy airspace.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration says it has placed two employees on administrative leave in connection with Saturday’s crash.
The FAA said Thursday that it has begun disciplinary proceedings against an air-traffic controller who was handling the small plane that collided with the tour helicopter and against a supervisor on duty at the time. The FAA says the controller was involved in “apparently inappropriate conversations” on the telephone at the time of the accident.
Close calls
Some of the incidents reported since 1990, which number at least 11:
• In 2006, the pilot of a prop plane headed south for a sightseeing swing around the Statue of Liberty said he might have inadvertently passed just 50 feet above a helicopter flying a similar route.
• In 1998, the pilot of an air taxi headed to LaGuardia from a heliport on Manhattan’s West Side reported that he came within 200 to 300 feet of being clipped by a Cessna.
• One pilot complained about a harrowing 1996 flight down the Hudson to his home airport in Linden, N.J. He had three close calls in 20 minutes. “Do we need another midair before the FAA . . . gets its act together?!” he wrote.
