Plane crashes into the Hudson river, all survive.

[K9]

US Airways flight from NY to Charlotte suffers a double bird strike and cannot fly far enough to reach an airport. The pilot using a great deal of skill and with a hefty dose of luck manages to land the plane on the river. The only serious injury is one person who suffered two broken legs.



Story on HuffPo
BBC editorial on how to land a plane on water

[Righ]

I was surprised that it took so long for a thread to appear here. It was half my TV viewing yesterday. I love me a good news story full of dozens of everyday heroes.

[Tale]

Best internets stuff from this crash:

* Flight tracker's recorded info on the plane: path - altitude
* First Twitter post/pic from a guy on a ferry crossing the Hudson.
* Become a Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger fan on Facebook.

[Trippy]

LOL.

[Paelos]

Quite awesome. It's one of those stories where you first hear a plane went down and think, well shit that means at least 100 people are dead. Then, you read on and find out it came out ok. That pilot should get some pretty badass thank you gifts from the people on board.

[Tale]

The interesting thing now is that the engines are missing. I guess that's to be expected as the engines on this kind of plane are under the wings, near the fuselage.

Are they designed to shear off like this when ditching a modern Airbus? Were the engines so badly destroyed they weren't even there? (they are present in a photo of the plane over the Hudson shortly before the crash). Or did this pilot, who turns out to be an industry expert on exactly this kind of situation and an expert on gliders, aim to shear off both his engines at once? Using his knowledge of unpowered landings, he would have had to calculate a trajectory that anticipated what was going to happen when the engines met the water and what level of drag to expect from them.

I've read about ditchings going wrong: one engine clips the water first, fucking up the plane's trajectory, sending it into a spin/cartwheel and killing everyone. Pilots say "you ditch, you die" because that kind of thing is what generally happens. But this plane is almost salvageable.

[Merusk]

I'd heard that he knew the engines would shear off and  due to the design of the plane, were going to be the first things to hit, and likely send him pinwheeling across the water like cigarette boats do.  So he landed the fucker tail first.  The impact as the engines and rest of the plane slammed against the water combined with the forward momentum probably sheared-off the engines.

[Simond]

Most modern planes with podded engines are designed to have the engines sheared off by the force of water-landings or similar because it's a hell of a lot safer than having them stay attached and act as huge brakes.

[Righ]

It is also not necessarily the case that the engines are still fully on the aircraft in that picture, although they probably are. What you can see are engine cowls. How much of the engine was still inside wont be known until they find the bits. However, turbofans are designed to stay largely intact after even very massive damage, and the cowling is designed to contain even extreme destruction from damaging the wing. With the amazing job that the pilot did, I'm willing to bet he cut power to the engines within seconds to prevent further damage.

As others have said, the engines are designed to shear off the pylon with enough force. They are probably at the bottom of the Hudson near to where they touched down. However, that's a fair way upstream, because they drifted until pinned by the ships. The first place they look they'll probably find them because the black box will tell them precisely where they touched down.

[Lantyssa]

He lost power almost instantly, so he didn't get to cut the engines off.  Which makes the landing that much more amazing.

[Righ]

Oh, he lost power instantly. But that doesn't mean he didn't cut the engines. He almost certainly did.

[Venkman]

Footage from what appears to be a Port Authority Dock Security Camera.

[Ironwood]

I have the not-very-popular view that we shouldn't be hailing someone as a hero for A- Doing their job and B- Saving his own ass.

But then we gave you Smeato, so what the fuck do I know.

[Righ]

Linked in annotation to above video is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGE5Xtn1PUw

beautiful tail-first landing.


Edit: Smeato isn't a hero, he's a superhero. At least that's what CNN said.

[Merusk]

I have the not-very-popular view that we shouldn't be hailing someone as a hero for A- Doing their job and B- Saving his own ass.

But then we gave you Smeato, so what the fuck do I know.

You're reading too much 4chan.

Yes, assholes always act unimpressed when people are "just doing their jobs" while they sit at their computers accomplishing nothing and risking less in their lives.  Just let it wash over you.

[Ironwood]

Not so much.

[Merusk]

Well in that case just kick 'em sqare in the jewels and ask why if they're so fucking awesome they couldn't dodge that. Protecting their genitals is their job so they should be better at it.

[Engels]

'Doing his job' doesn't cut it for me. Sure, we would all hope and wish that every commercial pilot out there has the steel nerves to put his skill to use during a life threatening situation and perform an emergency landing with dozens of lives aboard without asking for a pay raise, but that's not reality. He deserves kudos for doing an already very difficult job under extreme pressure. Not to mention that landing an airplane is already a significantly difficult task without ILS and the modern technology that makes it routine. Landing what is essentially a steel bus going hundreds of miles per hour on water takes a lot of talent and sang froid.

[Venkman]

I have the not-very-popular view that we shouldn't be hailing someone as a hero for A- Doing their job and B- Saving his own ass.

err, how many commercial airline pilots can save their own ass without, like, the rest of the plane. And this type of a job is just a bit different than pulling some crap nobody gives a shit about from some archive tape somewhere.

Just because I need to ask: do you have the same view on Firefighters?

[Abagadro]

One of my favorite aviation writers about how this was a combination of both the pilot and (overlooked) copilot doing their job, doing a very difficult thing that is not trained very much, and simply being very lucky.

[Ironwood]

Just because I need to ask: do you have the same view on Firefighters?

No.  It's fundamentally different.

Plane Pilots get into the plane every day assuming that things will be ok.  (Safer than driving, yadda, yadda, yadda).

Firefighters, on the other hand, are in a job that is fairly specific at the outset :  Guys, you're going to be putting yourself in harms way to save others.

Wildly different.

Also, that was a FUCKING STUPID comparison.  Feel free to berate me for my cold and unfeeling views on this particular story, should you wish, but try not to assume that I am in fact a massive and colossal retard.

I am more concerned at the Media's need to find a 'Hero' in EVERY FUCKING STORY, while being simultaneously amused that pretty much all media outlets thought it was 'amazing there were no horrific casualties' all the while sounding Really, Really Disappointed.

[Ironwood]

One of my favorite aviation writers about how this was a combination of both the pilot and (overlooked) copilot doing their job, doing a very difficult thing that is not trained very much, and simply being very lucky.

Thanks for this.  The article sums up pretty much how I feel on it.

While not to downplay the seriousness of what happened -- or what could have happened -- I will ask the media to please refrain from spinning this accident into too-big a spectacle. I’m annoyed by the consistent references to "a miracle." By all accounts the pilots did an exemplary job in a very dangerous situation, and the results were quite fortunate, but they did what they  had to do, and what they were trained to do. To hyperdramatize the event is, I think, to cheapen it. "Miracle" is an especially loaded word, and although not everybody means it literally, the pretense of supernatural intervention is tedious and insulting to those whose job it is to investigate airline accidents, and also to the thousands of victims of prior accidents who weren't so lucky

THIS.

[Venkman]

Plane Pilots get into the plane every day assuming that things will be ok.  (Safer than driving, yadda, yadda, yadda).

Firefighters, on the other hand, are in a job that is fairly specific at the outset :  Guys, you're going to be putting yourself in harms way to save others.

Ok, I can see that. So more like a train engineer doing really well in an emergency then, given that planes are basically another form of mass transit (or like in this case: the fact that there's much less coverage of how well the ferry drivers comported themselves, keeping pace with the drifting plane, etc).

I wasn't trying to back into an accusation. I was really just curious. If I thought you were a cold-hearted ass, I'd come out and say it 

[Strazos]

Still think the dude is Awesome. I mean, how many water landings of commercial planes do you hear about where Anyone survived? And what did this guy do? Put a flying aluminum can down into a freezing river pretty much perfectly. Everyone lived, and he may have "only' sheared off a single engine. Between skill and luck, odds are that pretty much any other commercial pilot would have destroyed the plane and everyone else inside it.

Also, the guy was a former USAF fighter pilot, so he's already pretty awesome. But really, when you go flying in a plane there's always that chance that something will happen: you're going thousands of feet in the air in a flying aluminum tube that also happens to be highly explosive.

Remember, not every call for a firefighter is a 5-alarm fire: a lot of times it's someone screwed up their toaster and smoked out their own house, or there was a car accident and the FD is called to up clean up fuel/liquid spills. Not every day for either of these professions is fraught with danger and death.

[SnakeCharmer]

IW's kid:  Daddy I got an A on my paper!
IW:  Stupid twat, that's what you're supposed to do!
IW's kid:   

[Hindenburg]

IW's kid:  Daddy I got an A on my paper!
IW:  Stupid twat, that's what you're supposed to do!
IW's kid:   

I had a friend who had a father like that. His rule was simple: anything lower than 9 and you get a severe beating. I thought he was kidding, until one day he got an 8.5 and started crying out of fear for what his father would do.

Became a medic, that one.

[Ironwood]

 

[Paelos]

Ironwood doesn't think something is awesome.

Also, the sky is blue.

[stray]

a very difficult thing that is not trained very much

Yeah, apparently not. My [trained] friend admitted that he would have crashed this thing..

[Ironwood]

You mean, like, on purpose ?

Now that's cold.

[WayAbvPar]

This is what happens when you don't buy American, US Air.

/Boeingsubsidiaryemployee'd

[NowhereMan]

all survive

This is what happens when you don't buy American, US Air.

 

[WayAbvPar]

Everyone survived on all the Boeing flights that day too, and they didn't have to throw their underwear away when they deplaned. 

[Righ]

So you are claiming that birds only get ingested by engines when they are fitted to your competition's aircraft?

[WayAbvPar]

That is just a cover story. It was really a bunch of smelly French cheese and wine bottles that was leftover from the launch party.