it collided in midair over the hudson river with a piper saratoga a fixed light wing plane. three people on board including a child. two bodies have been recovered which means nine deaths in all. there are still seven bodies that the searchers are looking for. at you can see on the left-hand side of your screen they have been doing that for the better part of the last three hours and 18 minutes since noontime. tom ruskin joins us, tom, what was important in the mayor's initial words, he said the plane ran into the back side of the chopper. from an investigative standpoint talk to us where it goes from there? >> what is happening now, they are trying to secure whatever wreckage they have the mayor seemed to indicate it was a helicopter. so what they want to do is the divers want to secure that wreckage so it doesn't move down the hudson with the very strong currents that were shown during the u.s. air crash where the plane moved from up the river, down the river very quickly. they are trying to secure the wreckage. what they are trying to do is the diers have to take differen

you can clearly see the right wing of the piper saratoga has been sheared off. and you can't even see it in the picture and the plane, of course, is heading down-to-earth. the chopper already falling and five italian tourists on board, including the pilot. >> those pictures are really extraordinary. i mean, when you look at the picture, you think, oh, my god, what is it that i'm seeing? now that we've been telling you exactly what happened, it's really hard to believe unless you actually see these photos and these photos were brought to us by a family from canada that happened to be visiting new york city for the very first time. they were on board one of the liberty cruise lines where they say some 600 passengers actually saw the same thing they did. looking up in the air, they took pictures of what appeared to be a plane and a helicopter very close to one another and then they witnessed this and screams and cries, you can imagine, on board that ferry where their purpose for being on that ferry today was to view the statue of liberty and what they ended up seei

the second aircraft was a piper saratoga, ta 32r that departed teeterboro. n number november 71 mike charlie. there was a pilot and two passengers. they collided in midair shortly before noon over the hudson river near stevens point. three victims have been recovered, dive operations have been suspended for the evening and they will resume at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. they have located the helicopter. it has been marked with buoys and the site has been secured with authorities who will there be throughout the evening. using side-scanning sonar to locate the airplane and any other wreckage. once that wreckage is pulled up, they will try to do it tomorrow, depending on the current and the circumstances and the conditions, if they can reeverybormove it, it will be pulled up and taken a secure lotion for further examination. our team did talk to a witness to the accident today, it was another liberty helicopter pilot. he was hot fueling his aircraft at the west 30th street heliport. he said he was looking west and the accident helicopter was heading south. he

sightseeing helicopter, an a-3 star 50 made by euro cop terse an we think the airplane was a piper saratoga. the airplane we think took off from teterboro and had on board a pilot and two agos, one a child, we do not have the names and/or ages or where they come from. and on the helicopter, there were five italian tourists and a pilot. we have at this point found two bodies. we're not sure where one of them came from, the other one we're reasonably sure came from the helicopter. we found some wreckage, we believe that it is the helicopter but were the vis siblts about two feet, the depth of 30 feet on the jersey side of the river opposite roughly 14th street where the wreckage was located. we've not found the second piece of wreck a we're assuming we have the helicopter, but i cannot for sure say that in which case we're for the airplane or vice versa. with me today is our police commissioner ray kelly. calvin draten, first deputy commissioner of the office of emergency management, joe esposito of the nypd, ronny spadafora, assistant chief of the fdny, scott stringer, our borough president

thing which we'll debated coming up and moment with a couple of lawyers but the single engine piper pa-32, saratoga the plane, let's talk about and the flight path and took off from teterburo en route to ocean city, new jersey, there is the plane, the tail number n71mc and the flight path, you look, a normal flight plan to ocean city from teterburo, you can see that actually flying over the hudson would not be so direct and a pilot source of mine told me yesterday and i'm quoting him, it makes me wonder if the plane pilot was a new pilot, and got lost, or if it was meant tor him/her to fly over the hudson like that. dj, what is your take? >> well, what happens, is in the new york corridor there, what a lot of pilot do, we get the vfr departure, visual flight rules and we have to maintain our own separation from other aircraft. now the reason he did that was, sometimes it is a hassle to get an instrument flight panel from new york travel control and you have to get in line with the other jets and wait for your slot to take off and he's ahead on the visual flight plan rule that day and may not have h