The Airplane Miracle: The Hudson River landing
By Andrew Swartz and Miranda Ramirez
Recently there was an airplane crash in New York City Harbor. According to the BBC website there were 155 passengers and all were unharmed; including a baby that’s only a couple of months old. After taking off at LaGuardia Airport the plane suffered difficulties and had to land in the Hudson river where they were rescued by local recovery teams. But what caused this crash? According to investigators, there was feathery organic matter found inside the plane’s engines; this could have come from a flock of birds that flew into the engine.
The pilot, Chesley B ‘Sully’ Sullenberger III, is the hero that landed the plane and saved everyone on it. The 57 year old pilot is from Danville, California landed the plane after hearing an explosion and seeing flames from the left wing. He has been with U.S. Airways for 29 years and was a former Air Force pilot and has his own consulting business (Safety Reliability Methods Inc.). After taking off, the heroic pilot reported that there were birds hitting the engines. The pilot was told to make an emergency landing at Teterboro Airport, but knowing that he couldn’t make it he planned to make the safest landing that he could, so he aimed for the Hudson River.
With the temperature of almost -7 degrees Celsius in the Hudson River, the rescue teams needed to get the passengers out as soon as possible. The plane was pulled down the river until it stopped next to a pier and tug boats. One of the passengers described how water was rushing in the plane, and how the flight attendants did a “wonderful job” evacuating the plane. Helicopters, tug boats, and ferries hurried to rescue all the passengers, flight attendants, and the pilot. The passengers exited the airplane quickly, woman and children were first, then the men. Once they were all out, they stayed afloat on the wings until they were rescued. Some even waited in the freezing water in a state of shock.
The day after the crash the news cast were talking all about it. One report that stood out to us the most was the ABC news. They were discussing a lot of interesting information, if your plane does crash to stay buckled until your under the water. They were also saying that now that this incident happened they are going to train pilots and assistants in a way that they can deal with this kind of situation.
In addition, the Disaster Victims website (disastervictims.org) was very helpful and informed us that five jet airlines have had an accident as result of a bird strike since 1975. Of those five accidents, about 35 people were killed. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) states that over 56,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft were reported in the United States from 1990 to 2004. Of that number, only 20% are believed to be actual bird strike related. Fortunately for all of the passengers on Flight 1549 they all survived.
Information for this article was collected from the following sources:
1) BBC News ‘Comtrolled chaos’ - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7835497.stm
2) WRAL ‘Investigation begins in plane’s landing’ - http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/4331992/
3) Disaster Victims – disastervictims.org
4)Picture of the airplane in the Hudson - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Airways_Flight_1549.jpg
5)The pilot - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chesley_Sullenberger_honored_crop.jpg
admin @ February 26, 2009