LA VERNE, Calif. -- Flying was life itself for Tyler Stanger, a flight instructor whose skills at the controls, honed since he was a teenager, inspired confidence among friends including New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle.
Both were on an aerial tour of New York City when Lidle's plane slammed into a high-rise Wednesday. It was not clear whether Lidle, who had been licensed for less than a year, or Stanger had been at the controls.
Stanger trained the ballplayer at his tiny, two-plane flight school at Brackett Field in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles. He was a popular visitor to the airport's coffee shop, Norm's Hangar, where he often took students for debriefing.
"He was such a sweet guy, a genuinely down-to-earth person," owner Kathy Touche said Thursday, wiping away a tear. "He seemed kind of shy to me at first. He was more quiet until you got to know him, and then he opened up."
Dave Conriguez, the cook and a baseball fan, showed a laminated check with Lidle's autograph that he got when Stanger brought the ballplayer to the shop.
He last spoke to Stanger on Sunday. The instructor told him he was headed to New York, Conriguez said.
"They were going to fly back together. It was right after the loss to Detroit," he said, referring to the Yankees' playoff defeat against the Tigers on Saturday. "Tyler's such a great flight instructor that I never gave it a second thought. It was just, `See you in a week."'
Congriguez said he told Stanger that "as soon as Cory gets back, I'm going to have my picture taken with him in a Yankee hat."
Stanger and Lidle, along with their wives and young children, were vacationing in New York together and took in the city's sights on Tuesday, said Robin Howard, owner of Howard Aviation, an airfield operation where Stanger worked at as a mechanic in high school.
Plans were for the wives and children to return to California on commercial flights while the men were to take a four-day trip across the country, Howard said.
"He was very excited about the trip. He was really excited that he was going to get to see New York and fly back with Cory. They had become great friends," said Howard, who added he spoke with Stanger no more than an hour before the crash.
Stanger earned his pilot's license by 17 and earned a degree in aviation management from Southern Illinois University, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. He worked for several years as an aircraft mechanic.
Stanger had known Lidle, who lived in Southern California in the offseason, for about a year. According to the New York Times, they met the day after the 2005 season ended and flew to Long Beach, Calif. Lidle, who had never flown a plane, was hooked.
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