Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Airplane Accidents

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Marty Martinez plane crash picturesA woman died in a plane accident. 43 year old Jennifer Riordan, a mother of two and a Wells Fargo bank executive was sitting in a plane that just took off from Laguardia airport when one of the engines exploded.

Shrapnel blew out the window where she was sitting nearly sucking her out of the plane. Passengers struggled to pull her back while others tried to stuff clothes to fill the holes.  As the plane was quickly loosing altitude, pilots prepared for an emergency landing in Philadelphia. Terrorized passengers had to use their oxygen masks to be able to breath. The whole scene was completely chaotic with passengers screaming and flight attendants breaking into tears.  A nurse who was on the plane gave CPR to the injured passenger. She was rushed to the hospital after the plain landed. Unfortunately she couldn’t be saved and later on died from her injuries.

Operated by Southwest Airline, the aircraft that was originally heading to Dallas reported the accident as it was 32,000 feet in the air.  Southwest is operating 3500 flights every year. It is the first time that a passenger was killed in a flight accident since the airline started  51 years ago.  The plane was visually inspected on Sunday and no problems were detected.

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helicopter about to drown5 people died in a helicopter accident in New York on Sunday. Only the pilot, 33 year old Richard Vance, survived. The passengers were two 26 year old friends from Dallas, Trevor Cadigan and Brian McDaniel, an Argentinean tourist, 29 year old Carla Vallejos Blanco and two employees of the helicopter company, 34 year old Daniel Thompson and 29 year old Tristan Hill.  They were riding aboard a door-off helicopter that used to be reserved for professional photography but has been recently marketed to tourists as well.  Because the doors are opened during the entire flight, passengers are secured in complicated harness systems. Unfortunately what made the harness safe when in the sky became a death device during the crash. As the helicopter quickly went down in the freezing water of the East River, none of the passengers were able to free themselves from the safety harness. The federal regulators announced yesterday that they would give urgent attention on the use of harnesses for aerial photography.

Before boarding the 5 passengers were required to look at a 10-minute safety video which briefly explains that there is a knife in a pocket of the harness that has to be used to cut a strap in the back of the harness in case of emergency . Tourist are often so excited that they don’t really pay attention to the video. Additionally when someone is upside down panicking in freezing water , everything becomes much more difficult. One would hvae to be trained like a Navy Seal to free himself in such difficult conditions.

The pilot told investigators that a bag or a strap of a bag may have touched a fuel control switch however experts doubt that this theory is plausible.  The pilot then realized he was experiencing engine trouble and decided to attempt an emergency landing. He could have chosen Central Park but he decided to land on the East River instead. The pilot executed what is known as an emergency auto rotation maneuver but the helicopter turned over and sank with the passengers stuck in their safety harnesses. The emergency inflatable pontoons didn’t function proprely. Read more in the NY Post.

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hit and runOn average there is one fatal hit and run accident every week in New York City and too often the police will never be able to identify the driver.  Out of 44,865 hit-and-runs reported to the NYPD in the 2016 fiscal year, there were only 510 arrests. To fight this epidemic, the City Council passed a new bill yesterday. The bill is named after Queens DJ Jinx  Paul who was killed in a hit and tun accident last year in Brooklyn. It was introduced by Coucilman Idanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan). Rodriguez proposes to create a system similar to the existing Amber Alert.  The idea is that the police use the existing Amber Alert technology to send out an alert of hit and run drivers with the available information. The NYPD supports the bill as long as they have an option to op out in case the alert may compromise the investigation or if they don’t have sufficient information.

Read more in the NY Daily News

Picture: courtesy of Maxpixel

 

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Three people died in a plane accident in Long Island, NY. The passengers, two men and a woman had taken off from Myrtle Beach, SC and planned to land in Plainville Connecticut later on during the day. The airplane made a distress call to air traffic control and reported an instrument problem. The plane then disappeared from radar. It crashed on a residential road in Syosset, Long Island, NY. Debris fell from the skies into a school backyard and in residential properties. Witnesses said it was terrifying. Very foggy weather conditions may also have been a factor in the fatal accident. Investigators are still working on finding the exact causes of the crash.

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Two 19 year old Colgate University students were killed in a plane crash  yesterday afternoon in Morrisville, NY. Ryan Adams and Cathryn (Carey) Depuy ,  both Ridgefield natives.  The pair took off from Morrisville airport and flew 10 miles before crashing in a wooded area. They were killed instantly. Read more in the NY Daily News

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A small plane crashed in a backyard in Long Island this morning, killing the pilot who was alone in the plane. Apparently the pilot managed to steer his plane between two houses before crashing in the backyard of one of them on Camille Lane in Suffolk County’s East Patchogue. A mother was attending to an infant in the house. Thankfully they were not injured. (read more here)

NBC 4 New York has obtained exclusive video of the aftermath of the deadly plane crash on Long Island. Note: Audio has been removed.

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Investigation of a plane accident that killed a pilot, a passenger and left two other passengers seriously injured showed a very high level of THC in a Canadian pilot who was flying a Cessna 208B Caravan operated by Air Tindi Ltd. near Lutsel K’e, Northwest Territories.

The toxicology report indicates that the significant amount of THC found in the pilot’s system impaired his performance and adversely effected his decision making.

Even though the pilot was well qualified to fly using instruments, he chose to fly at a low altitude in foggy conditions. The low visibility prevented the pilot from seeing and avoiding terrain.

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