video NBC's New York local affiliate WNBC aired exclusive home video of the tragic collision between a small airplane and a tourist helicopter during their newscast  tonight. The video, shot by a tourist aboard a boat on the Hudson, captures the moments before and the stunning impact when the small plane collided with a sightseeing helicopter shortly after noon this past Saturday. Video after the jump... (more...)

Note: The Twitter screengrabs to the right date from just after the crash, but the time indicators at the bottom reflect the time of screengrab, not time of posting. This post has been updated with new information since publication. Right now I'm watching Fox News' live report on the collision between a plane and a helicopter over the Hudson River today in Manhattan. It's about 90 minutes after the crash occurred, according to the first tweet I've seen about it, from Anthony De Rosa at 12:10 pm. It's a surprisingly precise way to assess it — reports place the crash at just after noon — because one moment my Tweetdeck was filled with details of brunch, coffee and morning runs, and the next tweets from people like Brian Stelter and Marc Ambinder started coming thick and fast, along with incidental reports from people I follow who just happened to be on the west side — like Michael Orell: "At Chelsea Piers Gym. This is the second time I'm watching a plane crash recovery from the Hudson. All wreckage looks to be submerged." (Update: First tweet I can find on this is Dan Belanger (@ziggfather) at 12 noon exactly.) By now, 90 minutes later, the networks have gotten a handle on it — NY1 was covering it almost immediately; the New York Times put out a story at about 1:05 p.m. (following up on a news alert banner at around 12:25 p.m.); Fox News is providing fantastic live coverage with commentary from anchor/host Jon Scott, also a licensed pilot and scuba diver with rescue training, who is giving extremely sharp ongoing analysis. But right when a story like this breaks — an event in public that no one has an exclusive on, just an army of news junkies trying to collect and share new emerging information — there is just no beating Twitter. (more...)