Weehawken resident Craig Hartwick wanted to take his dog, Elmo, for a walk last Friday morning, so he decided to go down Pershing Road to Port Imperial Boulevard, adjacent to the NY Waterway ferry terminal.
As he was walking down the hill, he looked up and noticed that a small plane flying somewhat low to the waters of the Hudson River.
“That plane was flying so low that it looked like it was skimming the water,” Hartwick said. “It couldn’t have been more than four feet off the river. I was really frightened. I definitely thought something was wrong.”
Hartwick swears that then, the plane disappeared.
Totally vanished from his sight.
“It was gone,” Hartwick said. “I swear, I thought it went into the water. I never saw it go into the water, but where could it have gone?”
Hartwick was not the only person who believed the plane went down into the icy Hudson River. Several people on the New York side of the Hudson, near the George Washington Bridge, noticed the plane flying close to the water, then disappearing from sight as well.
The New York harbor police and the U.S. Coast Guard dispatched a scuba crew to comb the waters for a possible crash. An aviation rescue team was also put into place, to check for any debris that could be spotted.
Upon receiving the calls, the Federal Aviation Administration issued “an alert notice” of a possible crash into the Hudson.
Other witnesses described the plane as a single-engine, high-winged aircraft with a blue stripe. Hartwick wasn’t close enough to see the particulars of the plane.
“It definitely went down,” Hartwick said. “I was sure of it.”
The New York harbor police searched all day Friday and found no signs of any crash.
On Saturday morning, the Weehawken police received a call from a resident who said that he believed he spotted debris floating near the Chart House Restaurant, near the piers located adjacent to the Chart House.
“The man thought he saw debris floating in the river,” Weehawken Deputy Police Chief Robert DelPriore said. “He thought it appeared to look like Styrofoam. Our officers couldn’t get close enough to what was spotted, so we called the harbor patrol.”
However, when the harbor police got close enough to spot the floating items, they turned out to be ice.
“Since they were already searching for the plane and we knew that they were, we had to be sure,” DelPriore said. “Debris from a crash would have naturally flowed down stream and could have settled there. It made sense. We had to check it out.”
Later Saturday, the FAA received a call from a flight service station in Burlington, Vermont, after talking to a pilot who said he was flying close to the Hudson River on Friday morning.
Apparently, the pilot was involved in wildlife conservation, on a mission, looking closely for ducks. The pilot was made aware of the alert about a possible crash and contacted the FAA in Burlington. The aircraft, which resembled the one spotted by the two New York residents and by Hartwick, is a Department of Interior Wildlife and Fish Preserve corps.
“He was on a special mission, looking for ducks,” FAA spokesman Jim Peters said. “He flew close to the shore to look for ducks, then flew off. The plane never touched the water.”
FAA officials believe the reason the witnesses were sure the plane went into the water was snow blindness, the glare of the sun off the snow. They said this could have caused people to actually witness a crash that never happened.
“It must have been an optical illusion,” DelPriore said. “They were certain they saw something and we had to check it out.”
“I don’t know what I saw,” Hartwick said. “I just didn’t see the plane anymore. I still have no idea where it went.”
The pilot was safe and unharmed.