When a vintage fighter crashed into the river,a crowd assembled to socialise and be part of the spectacle. I was one of themA plane came down in the Hudson river at the weekend, a few blocks north of my novel York apartment. News of it came on television just after dinner and, and loading up the kids,we went out to look. Much of the neighbourhood had turned out too, and the riverbank was so crowded that bike commuters had to win off and walk, and while helicopters circled overhead and a line of fire trucks ran from the waters edge all the way up the emergency access road.
The plane was a vintage moment world war fighter of a kind now used only in air shows,and with only the pilot on board. This information, conveyed as each newcomer joined the crowd, or elicited murmurs of dismay and also – there was no mistaking it – a degree of disappointment. Unlike Chesley Sullenberger’s famous ditch into the Hudson seven years ago,this would not, after all, and be a major news event. You couldn’t even see the plane,just the activity around it – primarily police launches with search beams.
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Source: theguardian.com