I have the feeling that this question has been asked and answered already somewhere in this forum. If so, a link would be appreciated.
The crew was applauded at the Superbowl and I will take the word of the press that this was the first water crash where no one died.
It seems the circumstances here may have been different in that the plane ditched in a river rather than an open ocean. The lack of waves would certainly raise the chances of success.
Is the pilot to credit in this situation or would any trained commercial pilot had the same outcome?
This is not true. According to Patrick Smith, who writes the Ask the Pilot column on Salon.com, “In 1963, an Aeroflot jet splash-landed in the Neva River outside Leningrad. Everybody on board survived.”
I lean towards “skill”, although it’s more a matter of doing something perfectly rather than doing something extraordinary. On the day of the crash, one enthusiastic analyst on one of the cable news channels explained how perfect the landing was:
If the nose was too low, the plane would have torpedoed to the river bottom.
If the nose was too high, the tail’s contact with the surface would have caused the nose to hit the water violently.
If the plane was banked to either side, the plane would have cartwheeled when the lower wing hit the water.
Therefore, it was the exectution of a perfect landing (and the quick decision to ditch in the river) that saved the lives of everyone on that plane. Perhaps most commercial pilots could have pulled it off, but this was the guy who had to do it.
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FYI, Wikipedia has a list of water landings. Aside from the Tupolev 124 ditching in the Neva River, there was Pan Am Flight 943 (100% survival) and Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 (59 of 60 survived) and several other water landings with varying survival numbers.
Pprune thread.
And to answer the luck vs skill question, I think it’s both. The pilots were skilled enough to do the right things, but there was luck involved. (If there had been a ferry in the middle of the river, things could have gone a lot worse.)
As Branch Rickey once said, “Luck is the residue of design.” Because the pilot was highly skilled, he was able to take advantage of everything that helped the plane land.
The luck was primarily because boats were able to get on the scene almost immediately. It was a built-up area with a lot of boats, but he couldn’t be exactly sure he’d end up five minutes away from them or twenty.
In my opinion it was a mixture of luck, good captaincy, skill, and balls.
Luck: Having the river within gliding distance.
Command abilities: Making the decision to land in the river and then clearly stating their intentions and following through with them.
Skill: Successfully landing in the river.
Balls: Walking the cabin twice before vacating the aircraft.
It was lucky in the sense that it didn’t take off from Las Vegas. Making a water landing is probably safer than trying to land on a random patch of earth.
I’ve talked to some airline pilot friends about this event. They lean heavily toward skill plus luck.
A couple said they have done some “minimal” practice ditching in a simulator. Two others said it was something that was discussed but never actually simulated. The touchdown is conceptually straightforward - gear up, wings level (obviously, as is the aim on nearly every landing) and speed correct (not something an experienced pilot should have great trouble with).
But even when this is done right, there’s no guarantee that the plane will remain intact. The fact that it was on a river (no big waves) helped. The fact that it was downstream made some contribution. The fact that there was an enormous area available absolutely helped - the pilot could go for exactly the desired speed without worrying about touching down at any exact spot.
The pilot gets a lot of credit for deciding on the river landing - many would have instinctively turned back toward LaGuardia or tried for Newark or Teterboro, which would have almost certainly failed disastrously. The fact that he is a glider pilot (and indeed, instructor, I’m told) no doubt helped.
After the landing, prompt help was needed - and available. This can be seen as a big piece of luck. The performance of the flight attendants showed real professionalism, and should not be lost in praise of the pilot alone.
I am amazed that he could manage to get those great big, solid brass balls through those little tiny airplane doors.
In our company the captains* practice a ditching at least once a year. I don’t know just how well the simulator simulates collisions though. We get the benefit of practicing the procedures and working through our recall actions but I don’t put too much stock in the end result being realistic.
*It’s a crew scenario like everything else but the captain does the flying.
Another professional vote for luck + skill + good headwork.
The way I’ve said it is “He was lucky to be handed a solvable problem; many aren’t. Then he worked the problem with textbook perfection.”
Although I don’t fly any more, in 20-ish years in the business we never flew the simulator to a full ditching. Even when doing international qualification for long over-water flights. We talked about it, studied it, and were tested on it.
We flew approaches to the simulated water, but ultimately the landing is the make or break moment, and at least on the ocean some of it will come down to luck: where are the waves when altitude and airspeed run out.
We always planned to ditch with some power still available if at all possible. This would give some control over how the airspeed / altitude / wave action triangle ends up. It also reduces the overall descent rate. The classic scenario was a big fuel leak far from shore. Better to ditch with 10-20 minutes of fuel remaining than to wait until it got dark & quiet.
I don’t know whether US Airways had zero power or some-but-not-enough-to-fly. Certainly having the esentially wave-free river helped a bunch in either case.
It all hinged on his decision to ditch in the river. He could be the greatest known skilled airline pilot in the history of mankind, and if he lacked the decision-making ability, it wouldn’t be worth crap right now.
Decision-making ability was his most important trait, supplemented by a heaping of great skill and wrapped up with…well…no word works better than 'balls."
The flat river certainly helped-IOW trying to ditch in a force 8 gale probably wouldn’t have been as successful.
Although the fate of US Airways Flight 1549 depended on more factors than pilot skill alone – many factors played a part, and several people displayed competence – it’s worth noting that the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, was uniquely qualified. Not only is he a glider pilot – important when the Airbus unexpectedly turned into a giant, clumsy glider – he is a noted safety consultant, the head of a safety firm, and he’s worked with the NTSB in investigating accident causes.
The fact that Sullenberger has spent a lot of time studying safety issues and accident causes and responded well to the crisis brings to mind the UA Flight 232 crash. In that case, a DC-10 flight instructor (Dennis Fitch) was on board as a passenger. Fitch had specifically studied the new DC-10 and expressed concern about maneuvering the plane if it lost the ability to control the tail control surfaces, which it turns out is exactly what happened in the accident. Fitch had actually practiced, in simulators, using the engine thrust to steer a crippled DC-10. He was able to laboriously turn the plane around and bring it to a crash landing that saved many (though not all) lives.
What these two incidents have in common is an individual dedicated to taking safety issues very seriously, thinking ahead, training, and practicing accident scenarios in the simulator.