The amazing landing and recovery of the US Airways jet has me wondering about a few details: Where did officials get the giant crane that picked up the plane and how do they move a crane that big? I realize it may be a construction crane, or some type of crane for the docks, but I’ve never seen one of those in transit.
Judging from the pictures, this crane dwarfed the plane it was picking up.
Also, what happens to a plane like this when the NTSB gets done with their investigation; does it remain in some giant warehouse somewhere? Does it get recycled if they have no more questions? How do they move such a large object in the first place, into a warehouse on land?
What is the procedure for the passengers to get any of their recovered things back in this type of situation? (I realize everything is sodden and will be moldy and that the Hudson river at that location might be brackish and that much of the luggage would have been washed away)
I’ve read the news reports but none shed light on these trivial questions.
It’s hard to tell in the picture but here is a overhead shot of a crane company in Milwaukee. All those things are the sections that they truck in individually and assemble on sight.
Here’s the street view, but you can only see a little bit of it.
I found some pictures of the plane being raised on the New York Times website. I can’t be sure, but I think the crane in this case is mounted on a barge, which is probably why it was able to be moved into place so quickly.
I know the physics of that is proven, or else they wouldn’t do it at all, but my lying eyes keeps trying to tell me there’s no way to counterweight for that and still have the damn thing float.
Total WAG: could water be pumped up into the barge in strategic locations to act as a counterbalance?
I would think that any luggage or other personal belongings still on the plane or found along the river will be collected by the police/NTSB and as best as possible associated to the various passengers on the manifest based on luggage tags etc, or give an opportunity to the passengers to come to a warehouse and try and collect their things. The airline knows who everyone is and where they live, so tagged items will be easy to match up. I presume the same process as regular lost luggage will happen, where identified items will be flown and delivered to the passenger’s homes by the airline.
Not really applicable to the plane situation as that crane floated in on a barge, but in general for applications where a very large crane is needed.
Big crane is trucked to the job site on multiple flatbed trailers. They also truck in a smaller crane to assemble the large crane with. For some reason that always strikes me as humorous.
You see, when a daddy giant crane and a mommy giant crane love each other very much…
Cranes are fascinating–I used to watch the humongous one in the local steel mill for hours. Picking up molten metal and slaggy bits, I always thought it must be like hell itself in that thing but one of the operators assured me that it has very efficient air conditioning up in the cab and they chill up there listening to music, slinging melty metal around for eight hours. What a cool job–also the crane operators that load freight at the Port are pretty bad ass too.
Apparently a very popular use nowadays for huge mobile cranes is erecting wind turbines in Europe. You need to lift very heavy things high up, but only for a couple of days so a tower crane would be wasted.
