Federal transportation officials are placing blame on the air traffic controller who was talking on the phone seconds before the deadly midair collision between a small plane and tour helicopter over the Hudson earlier this month.

The National Transportation Safety Board says that if the Teterboro Airport controller had not been distracted he would have warned the airplane pilot that there was a helicopter in his flight path.

The two vehicles collided, killing nine people earlier this month.

The NTSB claims that an automatic system radar sounded an alarm 20 seconds before impact, and the controller was on his cell phone with a female friend for the next 19 seconds.

The air traffic controllers union said the controller wasn't supposed to warn the plane about the chopper because it had already been handed off to Newark.

The crash has led to a review of air traffic procedure around Manhattan.

The accident happened over the Hudson River in a corridor where aircraft are allowed to fly north and south without authorization from air traffic controllers.

The Federal Aviation Administration does have voluntary procedures for pilots, like flying below a certain speed, making sure their lights are on and announcing their location on a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency.

Another recommendation is for northbound flights to stay closer to the Manhattan shoreline, southbound ones to stay closer to New Jersey.

Recent FAA data shows the safety record for that area has been good. With more than 200 flights per day, there had only been one report of a near-miss between aircraft since 1990, until the August 8 crash.

The NTSB issued several safety recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration today, including:

• Streamlining the routing of planes so that those that want to climb into air traffic-controlled airspace can do so more quickly.

• Requiring controllers to tell pilots they should use the shared radio frequency, the so-called "Common Traffic Advisory Frequency"--to announce their positions whenever they're in uncontrolled air space.

• Broadcasting automatic reminders about that to pilots.

• Requiring controllers to continue giving pilots air traffic information as long as they remain in contact, even if they're outside air traffic controlled airspace.

It is not clear whether the FAA will act on those recommendations. The NTSB has complained in the past that many of its suggestions have fallen on deaf ears.