Thread: How About That Plane in the Hudson River?

Very good news this time:

ABC News: Hero Pilot Safely Lands US Airways Jet in Hudson River

And nobody got hurt! Amazing!

Truly amazing,if not a miracle.That pilot is a true hero.Real scary though,I fly U.S.Airways a lot.

Amazing, indeed. That pilot is a hero. I'm thrilled to hear all the emergency personell went to their training and it worked so well.

I read a few accounts from inside the plane, and apparently there was some pushing and hsoving people out of the way, but for the most part it was orderly. Panic was there, but controlled. (Panic being the bigget killer in survivable situations, I believe). Women and children were put on rafts or boats first, as it should be.

Great work on all accounts. Thank whatever power you believe in that it worked out the way it did for all of those people. I imagine being on that plane with my wife and even more...my daughter, and the terror I feel for her makes me nearly sick.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

And nobody got hurt! Amazing!

Actually I heard on CBS this morning that one woman's legs were broken. But hey, she's alive to tell the story!

This is why i wont fly out of LaGuardia airport ever... i hate it !!!

It's amazing they are all alive today. The pilot deserves all the praise he is getting .... It was also said on the local news here that word is the pilot also flies gliders in his personal time etc. and that may have helped him understand a little better about gliding in and landing the plane on its belly in the river.

No doubt the pilot was highly skilled however play the scenario over 10 times and the results would probably be tragic most of the time. If the water had been rough, if the weather had been bad etc.

Originally Posted by Earthdawn

This is why i wont fly out of LaGuardia airport ever... i hate it !!!

It's amazing they are all alive today. The pilot deserves all the praise he is getting .... It was also said on the local news here that word is the pilot also flies gliders in his personal time etc. and that may have helped him understand a little better about gliding in and landing the plane on its belly in the river.

true, but i think even if he didnt fly gliders he still would of used his skills to land by gliding...its a big difference between glidding a light plane and 100 tons of metal like that usairways airbus a320, either way your flying but the physics is alot different, they train for things like this but really cant simulate it. only one broken leg from a stewardess. darn, i broken a arm from just a 10 foot fall.but yet they all survived a 1000 foot fall....god bless

I'm a major airline pilot, and I can tell ya that guy is as big of a hero as they're making him out to be. The skill required to pull off a landing under those conditions where the worst injury was a broken leg is phenomenal.

We train in simulators (which are *very* realistic) for just about every emergency imaginable, but a dual engine failure shortly after take off is not a required maneuver, as the odds of it happening are astronomically small. Occasionally, if there is sim training time remaining after the required maneuvers are complete, we'll do things like this type of emergency for "fun".

Dead sticking an airliner onto a *runway* is EXTREMELY difficult. Dead sticking an airliner into a river is exponentially more so.

The guy deserves every bit of praise he's getting. He was the right man at the right time.

Originally Posted by OLD_SCHOOL

Amazing pilot, all them passengers should each buy him a beer, when he's got a day off.

Amazing river too, that plane looked tiny, especially next to the ships.

The Hudson is a truly mighty river. You can get from the Great Lakes to NYC via the Hudson. My brother lives in a 19th floor apartment at 125th street overlooking the river. I heard the plane was only 900 feet above the George Washington Bridge as it headed back south to land in the water. That means it was likely pretty much at eye level with my brother's apt.