User talk:172.222.146.198

I worked at WJLA-TV in Washington DC at the time of the Air Florida crash. Chester Panzer did too. He was a WJLA videographer at the time, not WRC-TV as you reported, and shot the extraordinary footage that day. His partner was George Patterson, doing sound and whatever else he could. They were not the first media on the scene, they were one of the last TV station crews to arrive. But approaching from the Virginia side of the Potomac River gave them an excellent position from which to shoot, near where Lennie Skulnik dove in. The George Washington Parkway where they were stuck in traffic is not a few hundred yards from the crash site, as Wikipedia reported. They had to cross the snow covered median in their crew car to turn around and head toward the accident. They were coming from the station, their day complete--they thought--with (I believe) the third camera they had that day, with the other two breaking down in the horrible weather. Their batteries were fully charged. And the camera they had with them col bring the crash proved the third time's the charm.