Utah kin mourn pilot's death

Plain City's Meriam Stanger said her grandson — the flight instructor killed when the plane owned by New York Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle crashed into a Manhattan high-rise Wednesday — was passionate about flying, attaining his license by the time he graduated from high school.

The Weber County woman said that although the news of Tyler Stanger's death was shocking, he died doing what he loved.

"It's what he wanted to do," she said. "And everybody supported him. Of course we never thought this would happen."

Tyler Stanger, of Walnut, Calif., has many relatives in northern Utah, "more here than in California," Meriam Stanger said.

She said her grandson, 26, loved airplanes his entire life, "always looking to the sky." After receiving his pilot license at age 17, he went on to work for Howard Aviation in California for eight years as a mechanic and quit to start his own business, Stang-AIR, providing flight school and aircraft rentals. He also received a degree in aviation management from Southern Illinois University.

Stanger and Lidle died after Lidle's four-seat aircraft crashed into the 31st floor of a 40-story condominium tower on Manhattan's Upper East Side, eliciting eerie and instant memories of the 9-11 attacks of five years and one month ago. More than a dozen firefighters, police and civilians were injured.

Investigators on Thursday and workers in hard hats gathered up the scorched pieces of Lidle's shattered plane in a floor-by-floor sweep for clues to why the aircraft crashed.

Crews recovered the nose, wings, tail and instrument panel of the plane along with a hand-held GPS device as they conducted an exhaustive search of the building — inspecting even terraces and ledges, said National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.

Hersman said the single-engine plane was cruising at 112 mph at 700 feet of altitude as it tried to make a U-turn to go south down the East River. It was last seen on radar about a quarter-mile north of the building, in the middle of the turn, at 500 feet.

"Early examination indicates that the propellers were turning" at the time of impact, Hersman said, suggesting the engine was still running.

The medical examiner's office removed the bodies of Lidle and Stanger Wednesday, but pieces of fuselage, a plane door and crushed vehicles still littered the street. Officials said aircraft parts and headsets were on the ground, and investigators discovered the pilot's log book in the wreckage. It remained unclear who was piloting the plane at the time of the crash.

Stanger and Lidle apparently planned on flying from New York to California this week, after the Yankees' defeat in the playoffs over the weekend.