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Separation when radar was available. the report notes that flight crews exercise a lower degree of vigilance in areas where they receive radar assistance. and it says controllers seem to similarly relax vigilance. this controller may have believed that the flight crew had a better grasp on the situation than he did. >> it could be days before the cleanup is complete. and in the words of one policeman, it will be years before this neighborhood is ever the same. >> after the psa crash, the faa stepped up efforts to improve separation of aircraft around the nation's busiest airports and to modern...

>> investigators also learn that the pilot of a piper was likely dealing with a distracting situation of his own, as he struggles to reestablish contact with the controllers providing flight following. >> the air traffic controller at teterboro said he needed to talk to the newer controller who handled that piece of airspace. he was given a hand-off frequency. it is the pilot's responsibility to then read it back to the controller to ensure accuracy. >> the piper's pilot, however, reads the frequency back incorrectly, and teterboro's air traffic controller doesn't catch the mistake. investigat...

And the helicopter. gregg feith consulted on the case for the family of the fixed wing pilot. >> there were aircraft taking off from two separate places. the helicopter was taking off out of the 30th street heliport in new york city. >> operated by 32-year-old pilot jeremy clark, the helicopter's tour was going to take the five italian tourists on board down the middle of the hudson river, around the statue of liberty, and back up. >> they were on a fixed route, about a thousand feet above the ground. >> according to investigators, the other aircraft, a fixed wing piper pa-32r-300, takes off a...

Helicopter's operation. the collision occurs at 1100 feet, 100 feet above the recommended maximum altitude for the helicopter. investigators speculate that clark may have been distracted by his role as a pilot and tour operator. >> some of these pilots also become the tour guide, if you will, explaining the buildings, pointing out particular scenes and that kind of stuff. you have to divert your attention, if that's the type of operation you're running. >> investigators raise the possibility that this disextraction may have prevented clark from noticing the piper approaching from the west as h...

And mechanical issues can all test a pilot's skill. >> general aviation pilots, they are nonprofessional pilots. they are flying for recreational purposes. they don't necessarily have the same level of operational discipline as an airline pilot so there's a lot of room for error. >> the vast majority of light aircraft flights land safely without incident. but when things do go wrong, a split second decision can mean the difference between life and death. july 16th, 1999, it's a mild quiet evening in fairfield, new jersey, at thees sex county airport known to locals as caldwell. private pilot j...