I am sorry but I am not really impressed by this whole thing. I mean birds got sucked into the engines and after that everything happened perfectly, the way it should have. I mean like from what I have read everybody did exactly what they should have flawlessly. Do we really fuck up as a society enough to praise when everything goes right at once? Is this really the first water ditching that no one died? I really cannot believe that this is the first time every one has walked away. I am glad everybody survived and I am sure that not every pilot could have pulled that off but this guy used his training and got everyone out safe. Am I missed something here? I know this is the United States and we just love our heroes but come on really? What is your opinion on this
I mean, suppose a goose gets sucked into the grill of a bus. You pull over to the side of the road and wait for a new bus. It’s very unlikely that the bus would fall out of the sky and explode in a fiery fireball of death.
When something goes wrong with an airplane when it’s in the air, the result is almost never good, even when the crew does everything correctly. The fact that this was a large passenger jet that managed to lose thrust in both engines simultaneously at an altitude of several thousand feet, yet the worst injury was a leg laceration, is really fucking amazing and unprecedented.
That said, it would be nice if people would STFU about it already.
If you changed “everything goes right at once” to “numerous lives are saved for the better” then yes…
Yes, we should praise that. Anytime people don’t have to die because things went wrong but cooler heads prevailed is a good thing.
seriously though, as Ro0sh said, cooler heads prevailed and that’s something that should definitely be praised. Granted, I’m far away from the situation so I’m not dealing with news of it every day or anything, so it hasn’t gotten on my nerves
ETA: and for the record, friedo, I would have said “a fiery fireball of fire”
The key thing here is that 1) the pilot calmly executed a flawless water landing, 2) the passengers evacuated the plane without panicking, and 3) nearby boats were at the scene and rescuing passengers without incident within minutes. Everyone remained calm and precisely did their share without pissing themselves. What’s not to like?
Nothing it just seemed like everything happened the way it should have which is how life should be…
On 21 August 1963, an Aeroflot jet powered Tupolev Tu-124 ditched into the Neva River in Leningrad after running out of fuel. The aircraft floated and was towed to shore by a tugboat which it had nearly hit as it came down on the water. The tug rushed to the floating aircraft and pulled it with its passengers near to the shore where the passengers disembarked onto the tug; all 52 on board escaped without injuries.[12] The survival rate was 100%.
In October 1956, Pan Am Flight 943 (a Boeing 377) ditched northeast of Hawaii, after losing two of its four engines. The aircraft was able to circle around USCGC Pontchartrain until daybreak, when it ditched; all 31 on board survived.[14][15] The survival rate was 100%.
On April 16, 1952, the prototype de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover was ditched in the Bismarck Sea between Wewak and Manus Island. The port propeller failed, a propeller blade penetrated the fuselage and the pilot was rendered unconscious; the ditching was performed by a passenger. The survival rate was 100%.
Yeah, it’s like when some firefighters rush into a burning building and pull people to safety right before it collapses and everyone is all “OMG that’s so brave” and I’m like “WTF they are just doing a job and it worked out so it was totally easy anyhow” and they’re all “No way!” and I’m totally “Way! Fire has been burning stuff for YEARS bro so just quit spazzing”.
Next up: What’s the big deal with mountain search & rescue? I found my pen in the lawn yesterday.
I think you are confusing the outcome that you WANT with the outcome that is LIKELY if left up to chance. If I’m in a horrible car crash and clinging to my life with major injuries and the paramedics and ER team do their damndest and I live to tell about it, it’s a pretty damn big deal despite the fact that everything turned out the way it “should”, because that result is achieved by a bunch of skilled people doing an excellent job under very difficult circumstances, not because that’s the outcome to be expected if a random passerby walks up and slaps a band-aid on me.
[quote] ChrisBooth12: In the list of successful water landings you provided, the first plane did not have the weight of fuel while the one in the Hudson was full. The second plane still had two engines; the one in the Hudson was gliding. The third plane was a much smaller craft than the airbus.
Planes can and do break apart very quickly when landing in water.
All of those instances are more than forty years old. I don’t know why that’s relevant, but it feels like it should be.
Is it the case that more planes required emergency landings back then? Or is it the case that there are more planes routinely landed on water succesfully nowadays?
In any case, I think that in this day and age when footballers and sundry other sportsmen routinely get fawned over and called heroes, I think it’s a bit petty to jib about the captain of that aeroplane being called a hero.
Sigh…
A Tu-124 is an in-wing engined A/C Like the British Comet. A Boeing 377 is an above wing A/C and the de Havilland Australia DHA-3 is an in-wing engined A/C. All the landings in your examples were started from a cruise altitude which gave the pilots critical time to plan while landing an airplane with engines that would not dig in.
What occurred with the US Airways flight 1549 was done on takeoff with an Airbus A320 with large turbofan engines hanging below the wing. The plane lost power while it was configured for takeoff and it occured at 3000 feet AGL. the pilot had to trim the aircraft from takeoff configuration to best glide configuration which means he immediately had to begin descending. He did this while looking for a place to land in a crowded city. Had he turned toward Teterboro at the suggestion of the controllers he would have crashed in a residential area. As it was, he made the correct decision while reconfiguring the A/C. This was absolutely critical and could not be deferred. He was losing 1000 a minute at an altitude of 3000 feet. From the time the birds hit he was less than 4 minutes from impact. Once he committed to the river he had to bleed off forward momentum while ensuring he could clear the bridges in his path. That alone requires serious judgement because he can’t alter his approach by much once committed. There is no way to go around, land short, or go long. His landing had to be exactly level with the water so that both engines struck at the same time. If not, the plane would have cartwheeled. Even if he hit the water perfectly one of the engines could have struck a wake first. In order to lessen impact he flew nose high so the tail would strike first and slow the impact before the engines hit.
Doing everything right in this instance would be like a bowler walking down the lanes while bowling a strike in each lane for a perfect game of 300 in under 4 minutes.
Not to mention that the captain in this case cleared the Washington (?) bridge without a lot of room to spare and just happened to have a clear stretch of river there - imagine if ferry boats had been out on that stretch of water at the worst possible moment. And this was in the middle of winter; that cold water can be vicious, with the potential risk of cardiac arrest.
I think what you’re missing is that crews don’t train for this. The chances of this happening is so unlikely that it’s generally not trained for. What that means is that by doing everything perfectly, the crew weren’t just regurgitating memorised emergency sequences, they were using all of the things they learned from their training plus their collective experience to generate a perfect outcome from a seriously fucked situation. This should absolutely be praised.
In our company we spend a lot of time at low level over water and so we do train for ditchings. Still, if one of our crews were to do as well as the Hudson crew did, I’d raise my glass in salute.
From every indication the captain is a pretty low key, rock solid, not given to exaggeration guy, right? As he was discussing the event last night, he in so many words said this; that between he and his crew they had some 140 years of experience collectively and that it took every last bit of that to successfully get to 155, the number of passengers and crew lives that were saved.
