I am writing this post at Lorne, as it is the 1 year anniversary of the famed US Air 1549 incident, so I decided to write about it for my post. On January 15th 2009, US Air flight 1549 was parked at the gate, whilst its 150 passengers walked through the boarding tunnels and through the Airbus A320s large doors. They were to be exiting via these same doors far sooner than anyone could have expected. The commander of the flight, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, was in the left hand seat, asking for ATC clearance as the two, Rolls Royce engines spooled up. It didn’t take long for the flight to get underway, and soon the Airbus was at rotation speed on the runway at La Guardia airport. It was the last time the airplane would ever take off.
Nothing was out of the ordinary initially on climbout, however. It was a cold yet clear day, and the flight was proceeding normally. The airplane was on autopilot, the crew dialling in the many ATC instructions they were receiving into it. As Sullenberger looked up from his instruments, he was alarmed to see that his windscreen was filled with dozens of large geese. They could hear them slamming into the aircraft, and entering the engines. They began to lose power on the engines, and Sullenberger said that he knew they were going to lose both of them. Sure enough, both engines quickly died, and they became a glider.
Now above one of the most densly populated cities in the world, at a mere altitude of 3000ft, Sullenberger and first officer Jeffrey B. Skiles had to find some way of saving the airplane. He told ATC they would be returning immediately to La Guardia, but it was soon clear that they wouldn’t make it. He requested directions to a closer airport, Tettorborro, but he decided that even that was too far for their crippled airplane. Sully then made the decision that almost certainly saved the lives of all on board; the decision to abandon an attempt at an airport and land on the Hudson River.
He quickly told ATC that “we’re gonna be in the Hudson”, and the co-pilot started the ditch checklist. With the engines stubbornly refusing to start, Sully lined the Airbus up with the river and told the passengers just a mere sentence; “Brace for impact”. The airplane hit the water, and very quickly came to a stop. “Well that wasn’t so bad” were Sully’s first words. The attendants quickly evacuated the passengers out of the emergency exits onto life rafts or the wings. Within moments ferries pulled up alongside the airplane and rescued the passengers. Not a single person died in the incident.
What also makes this incident all the more memorable is how composed the flight crew were. Airline pilots are generally cool by nature, but Sullenberger was something else. He almost seemed relaxed on the descent towards the river, something that being totally confident in being able to land the aircraft safely had something to do with. I’m half surprised he didn’t have a little snooze on the way down. He remained ice cool even after it had landed on the river, as it filled with water. The passengers were outside the aircraft, but Sully walked the aisle of the aircraft multiple times to check that it was empty. He was still wearing his flying jacket for god’s sake, and it wasn’t even crinkled.
Few flight crews can admit to remaining so composed in such a dire situation. However, there are some. Air Canada 143 was a flight on a Boeing 767, which was incorrectly fuelled with 20,000 pounds of fuel instead of 20,000kg of fuel. Consequently, halfway through their flight, the pilots heard a distinctive ‘Bong’ that they had never heard in the simulator before. It indicated that both engines had shut down due to a lack of fuel. They were not in gliding distance of an airfield, and so improvised and landed the aircraft on a drag strip, in front of some surprised spectators. Captain Robert Pearson famously said “I’ll just have to slip it” before sideslipping a Boeing 767 to an extreme angle to make it down to the drag strip. Another ice-cool flight crew saved the situation, but in my mind, no-one has yet beaten Sully at composure. Cool? Cooler than a Penguin Sorbet.
“Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III had just performed a remarkable feat of flying. Some were calling it a miracle. But there he stood, calmly, inside the glass waiting room at the New York Waterway terminal on Pier 79, speaking to police officials. His fine gray hair was unruffled, and his navy blue pilot’s uniform had barely a wrinkle.”
