Say, Khan, aren’t you dead? 
Yep - a combination of consummate skill, rock-steady nerves and enough luck to cover what little the other two items might not. Until they get the black boxes, debrief the crew and examine the plane we’ll not know the full extent of what happened. For instance, what flight control did he have? Did he have any engines, or was this a huge glider?
As time passes, I suspect this story will only become more amazing.
What did you think of my performance?
I feel bad for having not posted in that thread, since I do mourn Sr. Montalban’s passing.
I’m not a drama critic.
I officially have a crush on you now.
The awards would all be wallets that said “Badass Mother Fucker” on them.
Except perhaps on that connection I took last year, in which the world’s most jaded stewardess announced, “In the unlikely event of a water landing… :rolleyes: between Las Vegas and Palm Springs…”
Wow, it just became even more amazing to me after looking at this New York Times article. By the time we were seeing pictures and video, the plane had been swept by the current down to near the Statue of Liberty (on the front page of Huffington Post there’s a slideshow with a great picture of the plane with Lady Liberty in the background), but the plane went into the water quite a bit north of there, as shown in the map on that NYT web page. Jackknifed Juggernaut had said that it happened over the Lincoln Tunnel, but for those who haven’t been to NY, that doesn’t mean much. I’ve been, several times, but it didn’t mean much to me, until I saw that map. Wow, the river is narrow there!
Amazing that it missed the George Washington Bridge. Amazing that it was able to be landed right in the middle of the river. Amazing that no boats or ships were in the way (don’t they dock the big cruise liners on that side?). Amazing that the divers got there so fast (as opposed to just the helpful ferry boats) to save the two women in the freezing water. Amazing that the current didn’t take the plane nearer to shore thus having the wing hit a pier or boat. Amazing amazing amazing!
From the listing of the plane in the water I think it probably lost the left engine in the land… splashing.
Definitely. And the cabin crew deserve accolades, too - they’re the ones who had to deal with passengers who had every reason to panic, and physically direct the evacuation.
Well-trained people doing their jobs correctly under horrific circumstances - it’s a beautiful thing indeed. At least, beautiful to look back on once the danger has passed.
No, but he IS a glider pilot… can’t help but think his experience in flying without engines paid off here.
My prediction for 2009 in another thread was
I’m a psyic!
No, no, I don’t mean at all to take away from the pilot and what he pulled off, not at all. The man is a hero and he can come over to my house and nail my sister. But when you’re talking the difference of a few inches of wing dip on either side that becomes the difference between landing like a duck in the water or cartwheeling a jet across lower Manhattan there IS a certain amount of luck that bolstered the guy’s incredible skill. Not only were there not ships in the way, there wasn’t any sudden wind shear across the river or a wake from a passing boat or anything else. Yes, he’s an impossibly skilled pilot and deserves to be carried on a gilded litter for the rest of his days, but luck was certainly on his side.
It’s one of the big myths of disaster management that people panic in disaster situations. Most of the research around human behaviour in disaster situations tells us that in fact people tend not to panic. That what you are more likely to see is emergent behaviour, such as the boat crews going to help.
Another truism of disaster management is that very often the community (in a broad sense) are the first responders because they are the people on the scene at the time.
I’ve been doing some reading around the nature of individual resilience in emergency situations. One book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley cites a piece of research which suggests that people who listen to the safety demonstrations on planes are more likely to survive a disaster than those who don’t. It seems that even paying attention to the safety demonstration gives you a kind of very basic training you can call on, and which might save you a few, precious seconds in the event of an emergency.
I think the pilot was lucky enough to have had a double flameout while the aircraft was within an envelope from which there was such an improbably successful escape. I’m pretty sure he would also agree. If the strike had occurred just a few seconds earlier the results would quite probably been very different. Granted, this pilots envelope of survivability may be an order of magnitude larger than most, but it is still bounded.
It was everyone’s lucky day yesterday (and I think the pilot and cabin crew deserve some sort of medal). If you’d ask me to guess the body count on a fully-loaded jet taking off from LaGuardia and crashing two minutes into flight, it would be a lot higher.
The pilot showed a lot of skill and calm. The part I think is lucky is that landing where he did the plane was incredibly close to both the Day Liners and other tourist and ferry boats. The dispatcher apparently dispatched all available boats almost immediately on the plane setting down and the distance was short. Additional boats came over from Jersey and even the Coast Guard made excellent speed from the station at the tip of Sandy Hook. The shots of a huge FDNY fire boat helping to haul the plane to Battery Park City were amazing to me.
It seems like the rescue was handled perfectly and with great speed and that NYC and its nearby support did an incredibly professional and quick job. Passengers were treated fast and hospitals on both sides of the river were apparently used.
This story is just remarkable and makes me very proud of my city of birth. The whole story is amazing.
BTW: The hero (I mean the pilot Sully) was at first trying to get to Teterboro when he realized it would be easier than returning to LaGuardia. Then he realized his only option was the thankfully empty Hudson River.
Has anybody got a link for the ATC radio recordings of this incident? Pictures are all well and good, but hearing the actual radio exchanges from air incidents is what gives me goosbumps.
Like Shagnasty, I disagree with the last two words of this ("…just lucky"), but I do agree that pilots are generally calm in such situations. Think of Neil Armstrong, who had to stop his tiny spacecraft from spinning out of control in a pre-moon-landing mission. If the re-enactment in *From Earth to the Moon *is a good guide (and I’m told it is), Neil calmly recovered control of the craft by nudging the joystick, never freaking out in the least. As another doper put it, “that dude has a big pair of brass ones.”
The entire flight crew was great. They got everybody off the plane in 90 seconds. 155 people off the plane in 90 seconds. I heard one passenger calling it organized chaos. But that was a fantastic piece of flying and rescue and I don’t think one thing went wrong, from the landing to the boats ferrying over there toot sweet.
I’m wondering who gets the interviews first, Barbara Walters or Oprah. Please, dear God, not Larry King.