Miracle on The Hudson

[sp1023]

i'm tired of people talking about it on different thread, here ya go.

originally Posted by CNN

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, a former Air Force fighter pilot, has been with US Airways since 1980.
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Sources tell CNN that Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger was piloting US Airways flight 1549 from New York's LaGuardia airport to Charlotte, North Carolina, when at least one of the plane's engines failed.

Passenger Jeff Kolodjay offered "kudos" to Sullenberger for a landing that minimized damage to the aircraft and its 155 passengers and crew.

"All of a sudden the captain came on and he told us to brace ourselves and probably brace ourselves pretty hard. But he did an amazing job -- kudos to him on that landing," said Kolodjay, who was sitting in seat 22A.

Sullenberger's wife told CNN that she was stunned to hear the news from her husband after it was all over.

"I hadn't been watching the news. I've heard Sully say to people, 'It's rare for an airline pilot to have an incident in their career,' " said Lori Sullenberger of Danville, California.

"When he called me he said, 'There's been an accident.' At first I thought it was something minor, but then he told me the circumstances and my body started shaking and I rushed to get our daughters out of school."

US Airways said all 155 passengers and crew are alive and safely off the plane.

The crash-landing has also earned the former fighter pilot and private safety consultant accolades from state and government officials.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg commended the pilot for not leaving the plane without checking to make sure every passenger had been evacuated.

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out," Bloomberg said at a press conference Thursday.
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"I had a long conversation with the pilot. He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board -- and assures us there was not."

Sullenberger apparently was forced to make an emergency landing after geese were sucked into one or both of the jet's engines. An eyewitness working on the west side of Manhattan said the belly of the plane touched the water first.

An official who heard tape recordings of the radio traffic from Flight 1549 reported the pilot was extraordinarily calm during the event.

"There was no panic, no hysterics," the official said. "It was professional, it was calm, it was methodical. It was everything you hoped it could be."

The pilot and air traffic controller discussed options, including landing at Teterboro airport in New Jersey, the official said. Then there was a "period of time where there was no communications back, and I'm assuming he was concentrating on more important things."

Sullenberger's background in aviation appeared to have prepared him for such a situation.

He has been a pilot with US Airways since 1980, following seven years in the U.S. Air Force.

His resume -- posted on the Web site for his safety consulting firm, Safety Reliability Methods, Inc. -- lists piloting procedures, technical safety strategies, emergency management and operations improvement, as areas of industry expertise.

He served as an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member, according to a biography on the site. He participated in several USAF and National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations, and worked with NASA scientists on a paper on error and aviation, his site says.

For the passengers on flight 1549, Sullenberger's skill and expertise were apparent. iReport.com: Did you see the crash-landing? Send images

"I've flown in a lot of planes and that was a phenomenal landing," said passenger Fred Berretta said.

Berretta was sitting in seat 16A right over one of the engines when it failed and the pilot turned the plane to align it with the Hudson River. He described silence in the plane as the passengers waited to hear from the crew.

A few moments later, the direction to brace for landing came.
"It was an amazing piece of airmanship," said Peter Goelz, a former NTSB managing director.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

people in new york will do anything for attention

 

[emzie]

This is the third time since 1989 a US Airways flight departing from LaGuardia has ended up in an area river.

 

[Mowque]

good thing no one was hurt...

 

[Bigfoot3814]

It was so cold that day. I can't believe nobody got hypothermia from the water.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

i bet the movie gets filmed in toronto

 

[MagisterCultuum]

good thing no one was hurt...

What do you mean no one? Think of the geese!

 

[Mowque]

It was so cold that day. I can't believe nobody got hypothermia from the water.

i believe some old people did go to the hospital for that...?

 

[Bigfoot3814]

I should have said I can't believe nobody died from hypothermia.

 

[QuoVadisNation]

I have a friend who saw the plane glide just over the George Washington Bridge. It'd have been a lot more problematic had it collided.

How can people now argue against the extermination of all birds?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't see how annihilating Penguins would help save airplanes.


There are safety measures in place that should make collisions with birds of less than 4 lbs harmless. Small songbirds need not be killed (well, until the collision), only larger ones like Geese, Swans, and Bald Eagles.

 

[Dachs]

I don't see how annihilating Penguins would help save airplanes.

Means that they won't be in a position to shoot airliners down with their ion cannons, duh.

 

[Cutlass]

Large birds seem to like airports because of the broad fields that surround them. Particularly in built up areas with few open places. There are many efforts to keep them away, but they tend to not work all that well

 

[Shekwan]

They should invent one of those noise emitting things to scare birds away from planes. Like the ones they use to stop teenagers from congregating in public and being a threat to society.

 

[Mirc]

They should invent one of those noise emitting things to scare birds away from planes. Like the ones they use to stop teenagers from congregating in public and being a threat to society.

The plane is noisy enough as it is. The problem, from my understanding is that planes are simply way too fast for the bird to realize what's going on. When the bird wants to turn its head towards the noise, it's already dead.

Great job on the pilot's part.

 

[Theige]

good thing no one was hurt...

I think someone broke both their legs... and a few fell in the water.

But yea, not bad for ditching a jetliner into a River

 

[Cutlass]

They should invent one of those noise emitting things to scare birds away from planes. Like the ones they use to stop teenagers from congregating in public and being a threat to society.

it's been tried. The birds get used to it. They use random patterns of noise. The birds learn to turn it out, because it doesn't harm them. They have men walk around with shotguns loaded with blanks, anywhere the men are not, the birds come back. They have dogs chase the birds off, same result.

This is an ongoing problem that effects any place that has large migratory birds and airports. No one has a solution for it yet. And they do try, because loosing an aircraft is a very expensive proposition. And some people do get killed. Had that pilot not had a river in just the right place, everyone on the plane could have died. Had New York not had a lot of river traffic in that area, at least some of those people could have drowned or suffered critical hypothermia before being pulled out.

It was a very near and lucky thing, as well as demonstrating a lot of skill.

The jet engine manufacturers use cannons to fire frozen turkeys at those engines to simulate bird strikes and try to toughen the engine up to survive that sort of thing. But as you can see, their results are not foolproof.

 

[Communisto]

Is anyone else a little irritated by the use of the word "miracle"? Shouldn't the credit be going to the incredibly skilled pilot rather than Jesus?

 

[Alpine Trooper]

Is anyone else a little irritated by the use of the word "miracle"? Shouldn't the credit be going to the incredibly skilled pilot rather than Jesus?

What about the engineers?

 

[Communisto]

What about the engineers?

As long as their dads weren't God then sure.