The sad thing is that if they had made the turn the other way, then things would probably have been fine.
Hi Sean, my point was that, although they didn't stall in the turn, if they had, then they would've had a very difficult time correcting it safely from 700ft ASL. I think it's just good practice to leave steep turns to slightly higher altitudes, at least if it all goes wrong you've still got room to make ammends.
Cheers,
TSC.
Roger...
True, they could have gone a little higher and still been legal, and with a little more thought, being right in the middle and knowing the wind was out of the east at better than 10 knots, they'd have made a decent 180 to the right... might even have kept it inside the exclusion with that wind. Not that it really would matter- I'd rather deal with having busted the airspace than flying into a building!
But one of the problems with that corridor was that they were (loosely) following the unwritten protocol that northbound flights travel on the east side, then turn to the left to go south on the west side. This is also the case over the Hudson, but it works much better there, because it's twice as wide.
Although many, many similar flights were made quite safely in that narrow box, I'm kind of relieved that they've shut it down. It was a trap, not worth the trouble of getting out of it safely.
Although I'm ticked-off that they waited until people got killed...