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The 30-year-old Cessna 172 bounced, skidded and spun, yet the student pilot and instructor climbed out on their own. Unfortunately, the incident further nails this as The Summer of What Is It With These Planes?
Admit it: Everytime you hear that familiar whirr, don’t you wonder — even for a split-second — if this is the next one?
PHOTO: MaryAn PladdysAs I’m writing this, I swear, I’ve already heard the chopping of a helicopter, the drone of a small plane and, twice, the roar of commercial airliners over the Hudson.
Pretty soon I’ll be able to give you make and model numbers without even looking. (NOTE: Make that three commercials and a single-wing prop.)
There was a time when Bergen and Passaic counties were considered suburbs, “bedroom communities” for people working in Manhattan. Morris, meanwhile, was an “exurb” — beyond the suburb, not quite yet rural, but lots of open space.
Jerry DeMarcoPublisher/Editor
Yet development covers the land now like a blanket, and the last place left for the pilot to make his emergency landing after his single engine cut out today was, of all places, a mall.
(Four commercials — and, damn it, the return of the cicadas. Oh, boy.)
Authorities said the aircraft was manned by an instructor from New Jersey and an experienced student from New York, both in their 30s and both “well-qualified.”
They reportedly were headed to Essex County Airport in Fairfield from Air Fleet Training Systems, one of three flights schools.
No lie: A helicopter just went by, and I can hear Commercial No. 6 approaching.
I’d move, but I’d still be in some flight path.
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