N.Y. jet crash called 'miracle on the Hudson'
Officials say all of the 150 passengers and crew members are safe
Passengers await rescue after a US Airways plane landed in the Hudson River on Thursday.
Lessons from a lucky crash-landing
Jan. 15: NBC's Brian Williams, Rehema Ellis, Jeff Rossen and Mike Taibbi report.
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Passengers survived crash and cold
Anatomy of a crash
Pilot made ‘almost perfect’ landing
Surviving Flight 1549
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NEW YORK - A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but officials said rescuers pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank.
After boats rushed to the rescue, the Federal Aviation Administration said that all passengers on US Airways Flight 1549 were off the plane and safe.
"We've had the Miracle on 34th Street for some time and now I believe we've had a miracle on the Hudson," New York Gov. David Paterson said in a news conference Thursday evening.
"We do not believe there are any serious injuries," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, noting some passengers were taken to hospitals in New Jersey. "The pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and getting the passengers out."
The pilot walked the plane twice after the crash to make sure all of the passengers and crew were safe, Bloomberg said. Most of the rescued were picked up right away and put on police, Coast Guard and ferry boats. He says divers pulled a few passengers from underwater.
The pilot was identified as Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger of Danville, Calif.
"He is the consummate pilot," his wife, Lorrie Sullenberger, told the New York Post. Sullenberger is an U.S. Air Force Academy grad who flew F-4 fight planes while in the Air Force, she said. "He is about performing that airplane to the exact precision to which it is made."
Sullenberger is an airline safety expert who has consulted with NASA and others, according to his resume posted on the Internet. He has 40 years of experience, 30 with US Airways, and hold masters' degrees in public administration and industrial psychology.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the flight had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in New York City.
The plane, an Airbus 320, took off at 3:26 p.m. and went down minutes later, Brown said.
"There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."
Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said that the pilot reported a "double bird strike" about 30 to 45 seconds after takeoff and said he needed to return to LaGuardia.
The controller instructed the pilot to divert to an airport in Teterboro, N.J., for an emergency landing, Church said.
Everyone started saying prayers
A passenger, Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., told New York's WNBC-TV he heard an explosion three or four minutes into the flight. He looked out of the left side of the plane and could see one of the engines on fire.
“The left engine just blew. Fire, flames coming out of it — I was sitting right there — and it started smelling like gasoline,” he said. “A couple of minutes after that, the pilot said, ‘You’ve got to brace for a hard impact.’ And that’s when everyone, to be honest, started saying prayers.
“You’ve got to give it to the pilot. He did a hell of a landing,” Kolodjay told the NBC affiliate.
Once passengers got out on the wing, “everyone was kind of orderly,” he said. “I just kept saying, ‘Relax, relax.’ Then it just started filling with water, quick.”
Scores of people in the city’s high-rises watched as the the dramatic landing took place just outside their windows.
Eric Thayer / Reuters
Police divers helped in the rescue.
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The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews opened the door and pulled passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Rescue boats and commuter ferry boats that ply the Hudson surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking in the near-freezing water. The temperature was around 20 degrees.
Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down.
"I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it's landing right in the water," said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television newsmagazine "Inside Edition." "This looked like a controlled descent." |
