this would not have happened. >> john wily, thank you. john wily will stick around. ntsb press conference. we'll carry live for you at 8:00 p.m. eastern on cnn. we are wondering what we are going to learn from that. let's talk about the tour company. liberty on rates the sight seeing helicopter. no comment from them so far. two years ago one of their helicopters dropped 500 feet with seven passengers on board. the pilot was credited with landing safely in the hudson river and evacuated all of her passengers. in 1997, a rotor on a liberty helicopter clipped a manhattan building forcing an emergency landing there. no one was hurt. our coverage of the breaking news story continues. we are awaiting an ntsb briefing should happen before the top of the hour. and a flight instructor regularly takes students up and down the hudson river. history on the high court. today, judge sonia sotomayor became justice sotomayor. we're taking your comments on facebook, myspace or ireport.com. >>> this is such a busy corridor for air travel. the ntsb trying to get on top of this to make

earlier we spoke with a retired commercial pilot, john wily. this was his account of all that has taken place thus far. any day that ends in why is going to be a busy day in the corridor. you have a lot of traffic going into the reliever airports. newark, teeterboro used by aviation and business jets. numerous other small airports. this corridor going up the east river at one time there was a proposal to close the corridor. there have been acts to lower the envelope so that previously i think airplanes were allowed to fly as high as 3,000 feet up and down the corridor. very obviously a picturesque area you can see a lot of the new york area in. but the problem that you have got is that almost in any vehicle that you are in, ear plane or helicopter, you are going to have certain blind spots. and from the information that i received in just a little bit of time i have done the research on this it appears that both vehicles were moving in the same direction. so a possible overtake could have created a blind spot for one of the vehicles. not to see

i want to bring in john wily, an aviation expert, a pilot here. she said that the pilot radioed the off-duty pilot on the ground refuel, radioed the helicopter and said you've got a fixed wing coming up on you. what does that say to you? >> well the thing that surprised me is that they said that the right wing struck the helicopter first. so if you've got the helicopter here, this airplane is coming up, i originally thought it was going to be the left wing. but with the airplane coming up in this position here, striking the right wing, separating the right wing, taking the rotor off of the helicopter, the guy in the fixed wing probably never saw the helicopter, he's coming up from behind the helicopter. his friend tried to radio and call him. the guy in the helicopter didn't see him either. see and avoid, you can't avoid what you don't see. >> boy, oh boy. also, just from the press conference, they're saying that the aircraft, the airplane, is registered in pennsylvania, that they believe teeterboro was just a stopover to pick someone up, they did

we just heard john wily, retired commercial pilot.uld carry as many as four to sex peopl six people. the helicopter belonged to the liberty tours. and six people may have been on board that chopper. and that collision taking place just in the noon eastern hour now. a massive search-and-rescue mix under way. one person we understand has indeed been rescued. much more straight ahead here from the "newsroom." now, i know the catering business but when i walked in here i wasn't sure what i needed. i'm not sure what i need. tom showed me how to use mifi to get my whole team working online, on location. i was like, "woah". woah ! only verizon wireless has small business specialists in every store to help you do business better. you're like my secret ingredient. come in today and connect up to five devices on one 3g connection. now only $99.99 i switched to a complete multivitamin with more. only one a day men's 50+ advantage... has gingko for memory and concentration. plus support for heart health. that's a great call. one a day men's. "wha