Small aircraft crashes into Federal Reserve Bank building in Miami...

Drudge Report ^

[SamAdams76]

The proverbial "nothing follows." Just got put up in red on the Drudge site. Please delete this thread if posted elsewhere or if this amounts to nothing.

[Fred Mertz]

Thanks.

[Hunble]

Old pilot joke:

If you must make an emergency landing at night, look for a dark area on the ground. Dark, because that would imply that no homes are in that location.

Just before landing at night, turn on your landing lights.

If you see nothing but trees, turn your landing lights off.

[Fred Mertz]

The way I read the 'facts' of the article: Airplane clips building and bursts into flames beside the building. Passenger leaps from airplane (not flaming) and lands on nearby golf course (splat). My conclusion: pilot on suicide mission.

Pardon my reading comprehension, but that's how I interpreted the 'facts'.

[eno_]

It was a nearly moonless night, which makes it tough, but there are also street lights adjacent to the golf course, and the plane probably has lights.

Hitting wires or cartwheeling off a sand trap would be the big worries. But, as has been pointed out, burning alive is a bigger worry than most anything else.

[FreeTally]

That sounds like the most plausible explanation.

[Moonman62]

The lights make the problem worse, as they make the golf course much darker by comparison, and they ruin night adaptation for the pilot's eyes. They were only a couple of miles from the airport, and there are a couple of well lit highways they could have landed on.

[freeperfromnj]

there are a couple of well lit highways they could have landed on.

He chose the well-lit building instead.

[Orbiter]

My apologies. The "hanging" horizontal stabilizer in the first pic you posted threw me off -- quite distinctive among GA aircraft, most notably among the Piper fleet. That said, and if I'd been more attentive, I should have noticed the "moon roofs" of the Four Winds 192 in your original pics aren't at all the tops of windows on a low-wing airplane. Mea Culpa.

[Williams]

"There was an inflight engine fire and that's all we're able to tell at this time. ... The plane itself was fine, but what engine problems they had, we don't know."

Did he really try to say that the plane was fine, except for that engine fire?? Even if they manufacture the plane and not the engine, I assume they plan for the plane to be assembled with an engine.

[Darksheare]

Saudi Air, "Hold my falafel"?

[Redbob]

"Fly through ATM?"

LOL!
Good one!

[Clemenza]

Sorry to have missed this! I worked a block east of this building (and LIVED farther east in the same neighborhood). It is a BRANCH of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta (Florida is under Atlanta's jurisdiction) and is not that big of a building, only slightly larger than the average Bank of America full service complex. The same neighborhood (Doral) also includes the United States Southern Command.

For those history buffs out there: the old federal reserve building was near SW 8th Street and 27th Avenue in Little Havana. It was where the Watergate burglers picked up their paychecks for "dirty tricks."

[Clemenza]

That was the plane, the '97 crash was not much more than 2 miles I think from the bank

Even closer. The plane in '97 crashed right behind the Carnival Cruise building on 87th Ave just south of Doral Boulevard (aka 41st/36th Street). I was an intern at the time at the bank I would eventually work for and we were able to see the crash from the employee cafeteria window.

[supercat]

Why did the pilot not also jump?

Perhaps he did not want to turn the plane into an uncontrolled missle and believed that if he stayed in control he might manage to avoid causing any casualties on the ground.

[Devil_Anse]

Maybe your reply WAS dumb.