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" PopularMechanics.com, Oct. 12, 2006 -- When I was a newly minted private pilot like Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle, I did the same thing that he did: I hired an instructor to show me how to fly the Hudson VFR corridor--a flyway of unrestricted airspace that follows the western edge of Manhattan along the Hudson River. (VFR stands for &amp;quot;visual flight rules,&amp;quot; which means the only things keeping you out of trouble are your own eyeballs.) It had been on my to-do list for a long time. After all, one of the major attractions of getting a pilot&amp;#039;s license--one of the things that keeps you motivated through the often seemingly endless months of study--is that when it&amp;#039;s all over you get to see some of America&amp;#039;s most spectacular sights in a way that few are privileged to do. And flying the Hudson VFR corridor is one of the most spectacular of all. For pilots taking off from Teterboro, a general aviation airport in New Jersey, 12 miles north of midtown Manhattan, the typical procedure is to head east under the control of Teterboro tower and then switch frequency to a radio channel that&amp;#039;s monitored by everyone going up and down the Hudson. At the Alpine Tower, a radio mast on a New Jersey cliff overlooking the Hudson, you turn right and descend to 1,000 feet and then follow the west bank. It&amp;#039;s like driving down a highway: southbound traffic on the west (New Jersey) side of the river; northbound on the east (Manhattan) side. The view of the city is incredible: You&amp;#039;re lower than the tops of the highest buildings, and as you pass over the George Washington Bridge linking northern Manhattan and New Jersey, it almost feels like the top of the span might snag your undercarriage. Essentially, you&amp;#039;re flying in what amounts to an invisible tunnel carved out of the heavy-duty Class B airspace that surrounds the region&amp;#039;s three airports: Newark airport, 16 miles southwest of midtown Manhattan; LaGuardia airport, 10 miles east; and JFK airport, 18 miles southeast. Class B is for the big boys--airliners flying heavy loads of passengers at high speeds. Class B is the Carnegie Hall of aviation, the Yankee Stadium. The thought of wandering into it by mistake gives most recreational pilots palpitations. Continuing south, you pass a Manhattan heliport at 34th Street--the chopper traffic can be heavy here, so you have to stay alert. Soon after, you soar past the towers of the financial district at the southern tip of Manhattan and then out over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. When I fly this route, I like to continue southwest over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which connects Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, and then double back and head generally north via the East River. A branch of the VFR corridor extends above the East River from Governor&amp;#039;s Island up to the middle of Manhattan--but then it dead-ends.  Governor&amp;#039;s Island lies at the southern tip of Manhattan, and heading to the right here begins the north-bound flight over the East River. If you want to fly farther north, you&amp;#039;re supposed to call LaGuardia tower and ask for permission to cross over Central Park in the middle of Manhattan. The air traffic controllers are usually pretty busy, so what you need to do is call early in the flight--over Governor&amp;#039;s Island, say, in New York Harbor, opposite the Statue of Liberty--and give them time to find you on the radar and give you permission to cross through the Class B airspace. The route passes over tall buildings, so the controller usually tells you to climb to 1,500 feet. Private pilots traversing the East River VFR corridor get a brief glimpse of midtown Manhattan (with the Empire State Building in the background). Compared to the Hudson, the East River is very narrow as it doglegs right, then left. You don&amp;#039;t have much time to watch Brooklyn and Queens scroll past to the east before you bank west and cruise over Central Park. Then you tell LaGuardia tower that you&amp;#039;re going back to the VFR corridor on the Hudson, and you switch the radio back to the corridor frequency. The typical route cuts left over Central Park for this view, just seconds past the site of Wednesday&amp;#039;s crash. That&amp;#039;s how it&amp;#039;s supposed to be done. Apparently, Lidle and his flight instructor Tyler Stanger never called LaGuardia tower to get clearance to pass through Class B airspace. Air traffic control at Teterboro says one of the men radioed in that they&amp;#039;d just go a short distance up the river and turn around. But, as noted, the river is narrow, and at low altitudes it&amp;#039;s hemmed in by buildings; it&amp;#039;s a lot like being stuck in a slot canyon. The day&amp;#039;s low overcast made flying conditions even trickier. If Lidle and Stanger had climbed to a safer 1,500 feet, they would have been nearly in the clouds--a very dangerous situation for non-instrument rated pilots.  What if they&amp;#039;d gone straight ahead--that is, continued north? Well, they would have busted right into Class B airspace. Doing that without prior clearance from LaGuardia tower might have resulted in a reprimand, or even the temporary suspension of their licenses. To avoid that fate, they risked a worse one, and lost.  Clearance from LaGuardia tower is required to continue uptown along the East River. New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his Cirrus SR20, similar to the one shown here, into a high-rise off Manhattan&amp;#039;s East River Wednesday. (Photograph by Justin Dillon/Cirrus Design) It&amp;#039;s easy to criticize their decisions after the fact, but in a moment of sudden crisis, when disaster looms and only seconds remain in which to take action, it&amp;#039;s easy for pilots to make the wrong decision, and to pay for it with their lives.  Some people who aren&amp;#039;t pilots don&amp;#039;t understand why some of us risk our lives for what seems to be a pointless thrill. For them, the logical course of action would be to shut down the VFR flyway to prevent more deaths. But pilots see things differently. To us, flying is a great privilege that, yes, carries a certain amount of inherent risk. But living in the presence of danger and accepting responsibility for it is one of the things that makes life meaningful. We don&amp;#039;t want to live in a world that&amp;#039;s foolproof and accident-free. We want one where prudence and respect can be rewarded with an indescribable freedom--a freedom that too few people are lucky enough to enjoy. The appropriate response to the death of Lidle and Stanger is not to ban similar flights. It&amp;#039;s for fellow pilots to study what happened, learn from it, and go on to be safer flyers.  Two NYPD Traffic officers watch over the intersection of 72nd Street and 1st Avenue Wednesday as the crash-site building looms over them. (Photo by Matt Sullivan) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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