Reply With QuoteI heard a great interview on NPR with a guy who was on the flight.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...020501274.html
This pilot is super calm.
Tower guys do a good job as well
I heard a great interview on NPR with a guy who was on the flight.
Interesting how matter-of-fact the tower guys are. No-one freaks out or does a Christian Bale.
Calm pilot voice:
"We're going to be in the Hudson."
He says that like I say "I'm going to feed the dog." Except he sounds way cooler than me.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Hudson.
What's funny is although he's calm, the pilot of the other flight asks what happened to him. I think the tower operator was a little flustered as well, he kept offering alternate landing strips.
Just unbelievable - Sully!
That was the literal definition of impressive.
yeah.
That guy is getting the Jon_Danger BAMF of the year award.
Sports columnist Rick Reilly met him before the Super Bowl, he wrote this in his Celebrity Sightings blog.
Who was standing there Saturday night—just he and his wife—in the lobby of the Marriott Waterside hotel in Tampa, Fla., but Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who ditched his plane safely and miraculously in the Hudson River with both engines gone. The man who saved 155 lives was about 6-foot-2, 175 pounds with a deep radio voice and a personality that couldn't be hurried with a team of Clydesdales. He was at the Super Bowl as a guest of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, but hadn't met him yet, even though Goodell was standing 15 feet away. I had to ask him, What was that like when you realized both engines were out? He thought about it for awhile and then said, slowly and deliberately, "Shocking. It was very quiet as we worked, my co-pilot and I. We were a team. But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking—the silence." How were you feeling inside? I asked. "Calm on the outside, turmoil inside." He kept calling the whole thing "surreal." His wife, Lori, said she and Sully have been opening letters every night that are so emotional "it allows both of us to express emotion about it all. We both sit there and cry." I wanted to ask him one more question but he got swept away. It was going to be: Do you mind e-mailing me the list of all your flights coming up in 2009? I'd like to be on them.
I got the impression from that audio that he could have made it back to LGA, but ATC didn't clear him a runway. I don't know if that's policy, or if they just can't respond fast enough to make it happen, but I was surprised.
Crashing in the Hudson, much better than crashing in Manhattan or the Bronx.Originally Posted by MikeSofaer
I didn't get that impression at all. I thought they gave him the only thing he asked for immediately, and came up with several suggestions when that one was no longer a possibility ("unable").
They were just following his cues. When he first reported the bird strike, the ATC guy said "Yeah, you need to return to LaGuardia," then after consulting the tower, he offers him several runways at LGA, and the pilot says "Unable. We may end up in the Hudson."
Who the hell is shooting butterballs double-barrel'd in NY, anyhow? I just can't imagine anything short of an ostrich that'd outright cripple an engine like that.
O rly? Then watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUlHGYFFldM
That engine -failed- that test, though. There's videos of other engines basically chewing up the bird and ejecting a fine red mist instead, right there next to that one.
I got the impression he was being offered runways in other airports further away, but I only listened to it once.
I'm waiting for The History Channel's CGI reenactment.
There you go, then. Sometimes you get an engine that goes boom, and sometimes you get squab burger.
Take it from me, luck counts for a lot. And I'm not even especially pronoid.
I first heard a segment of this recording yesterday on a local radio station as part of what turned out to be a really bad rendition of David Bowie's "Heroes". Nice idea, horrible implementation.
My father is a retired pilot (Delta) and he always said bird strikes were his biggest fear. By the time you see them it is too late and engines just weren't made to withstand that kind of trauma in mid-flight. What saved these people is his experience at being a glider pilot. He made that plane do things it just isn't supposed to do. Most pilots would have crashed it or just gone out to sea. He had to have everything perfect from speed to angle of attack and nailed it. He is a genuine hero.
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