Hudson River Collision Case Study

The pilot of the accident Piper PA-32R-300 airplane, age 60, was a credited Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) private pilot certificate (August, 2001) holder. At 11:40 am he contacted the air traffic control tower to request a departure clearance from Teterboro Airport (TEB), New Jersey. The controller provided the pilot with taxi instructions and inquired what route he planned to take to Ocean City, which the pilot replied after a short exchange that he would go down the Hudson River.

Having chosen this route, the pilot had to contact the controllers at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) for permission to climb into “Class B airspace,” after the flight was transferred from TEB to EWR. Afterwards TEB controller cleared him for takeoff,

These mistakes are important to further encounters of these types of collisions as it was created from a highly lackluster ways of handling control from the controller and managing from the front line manager.

According to the NTSB, there are five probable causes that contributed to the Hudson River collision. One of the main reasons is the natural limitations of the see-and-avoid concept forces pilot to only see the helicopter until the final seconds of the collision. The second root of the collision is squarely blamed on the TEB controller’s improper telephone conversation which distracted them from their air traffic control duties, which included the important task of correcting the pilots read back of the EWR tower frequency.

The aircraft pilots also contributed to the collision as they ineffectively used the available electronic devices that would have helped maintain awareness of any aircrafts in close proximity. The FAA can also be held accountable as their procedures of communication among ATC facilities were poor and their regulations did not provide decent vertical separation for the planes and