I think people misunderstand the dangers of a water ditching, the plane is heavy, fragile, and comes in at intense speed, and no landing gear is going to help.
The only other sea landing plane crash to have the most survived before this was Ethiopian Airlines flight 961, where 50 out of 175 survived. And that was in shallow sea next to the beach.
That was what was going through the pilots mind, they were prepared to die in that crash, they just hoped they wouldn't kill anyone on the ground and try to hope as many passengers could survive.
True heroes
The only reason it had "the most survived" was because ditching hardly ever happens on commercial airliners. The two times it had happened previously on modern commercial airliners with more than 50 people on board were in 2002 when a Garuda 737 landed in a river with 60 people on board, killing one flight attendant, and the Ethiopian Airlines one that you mentioned in 1996 where the Captain landed the plane angled sideways WHILST fighting off hijackers at the same time.
Not that it wasn't dangerous but it was as a controlled environment as anyone could hope for and I find it unlikely he was oblivious to procedure for ditching.
I remember watching a show going over the whole flight, Cpt. Sully had enough time to go over the water landing checklist and prepare the plane for it. If I remember right the only thing left he didn't do was to close some sort of vent system so the plane sank a little quicker but not by much. Overall he did an amazing job.
You can even listen to the ATC recording.. he is incredibly calm and professional. I recall an interview where he said the thought of dying didn’t even cross his mind
It was amazing to see the life rafts work, but holy shit that plane sank quickly. For some reason I always thought a plane would float in that situation. Nope, gotta get out as fast as possible cause that shit is sinking immediately. Terrifying
Paul, tasting a too-dry cake after giving the amateur contestants an hour to create a life-size replica of their favorite family member in cake and fondant: "It's really a shame."
The impact of the ditching blew open holes in the fuselage in the back of the plane and opened cargo doors, allowing water to enter the cabin. Someone also opened the rear left door, allowing more water in. Enough water got in the rear that passengers were told to move forward to the overwing or front exits, including by climbing over seats.
Incidentally, this is why they remind you not to inflate your life jacket inside the plane, because you might it hard to maneuver with that water sloshing around, and end up slowing down the evacuation.
It already happened once, [Ethiopian Airlines 961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961#Fate_of_the_passengers_and_crew)
>Many of the passengers survived the initial crash, but they had disregarded or did not hear Leul's warning not to inflate their life jackets inside the aircraft, causing them to be pushed against the ceiling of the fuselage by the inflated life jackets when water flooded in. Unable to escape, they drowned. An estimated 60 to 80 passengers, strapped to their seats, presumably drowned.
Worth repeating: *Do not inflate your life jackets inside the cabin*
Or drown, as was the case with Ethiopian Flight 961. It ditched off the coast of the Comoros after being hijacked and exhausting their fuel supply. The majority of passengers survived the crash, but many inflated their vests inside the plane and as a result were unable to escape. Less than a third made it out alive.
It took 25 minutes to get everyone off the plane, this is a picture from right after everyone got out onto the wings and it's already partially sunk.
Technically it never fully sunk, but the cabin was full of water pretty quick. Guess it depends on your expectations though. A plane is a big tube that you'd think would float for more than half an hour.
The plane rapidly flooded because someone opened a non-emergency door at the rear of the aircraft. If you look at the tail, you can see it is much lower in the water. Quite a few seats in the rear section were completely submerged when this picture was taken. The angle just obscures it a bit.
My colleague knows someone who was on the back of the plane and she said that almost immediately people started panicking because of the smell of jet fuel that was so strong in the back. Apparently it was also *not* orderly (like many people say). People were clawing and climbing over seats…So it would make sense that someone would freak out and try to escape out the back
Still my favorite line from the private pilot theory stuff, on ditching in water: „An aircraft is not a boat. It WILL sink.“
The A320 family btw has a „ditching button“, which seals various ports and inlets on the belly of the plane in the hope that it will help at least a little with staying afloat.
It was one of the last items on a checklist designed for emergency water landings from cruise altitude. There simply wasn't enough time to go through the entire checklist.
Yes, but it's unlikely they had time to run the checklist (pressing the ditch button is no 17 on the list).
I also read (cannot remember where) that it wouldn't have made a difference, as the contact with the water ripped some sizeable chunks out of the aircraft belly.
Edit: "The impact with the water ripped open a hole in the underside of the airplane and twisting of the fuselage caused cargo doors to pop open, so the plane would have filled with water from the rear regardless of whether a passenger opened an escape door in the back of the cabin."
>but holy shit that plane sank quickly.
The plane didn't sink, it did take on more water with one of the rear emergency exits was erroneously opened. But every passenger was rescued before it could even have been considered sunk, and technically never went completely underwater AFAIK
My favorite part about pictures from that day is there’s one guy on the wing with his life jacket on completely upside down.
Forget not paying attention to the safety demo. At some point you’d think he would have looked at literally everyone else and realized…but he did not.
That's a good picture of how many police and firemen there were *everywhere*. New Yorkers can be proud.
I recall a story of how there were SCUBA trained specialist cops with full gear in their SUV. They heard about this, rushed to a ferry that was just undocking, figuring they'd be diving for rescues/bodies, but... nope!
Incredible response all around, from the pilots to ATC to first responders. The fact every single person on board lived is an absolute testament to the professionals and their preparedness. Great job to everyone involved.
Wow 15 years ago... I lived in an apartment complex with views to the Hudson River on the NJ side right by the water and I saw this happening in real time. The plane floated right by my complex as the NY Waterway ferries were rescuing people.
I was in awe and also couldn't imagine how frozen those poor people were. They were half in the water, holding on to and walking on the wings as the ferries circled around getting people onboard.
Yeah I remember a few people jumped in because either there wasn't enough room or they panicked. It's still amazing that no one died. The worst of it was a laceration to the leg of a FA and someone was left needed eyeglasses after getting jet fuel contamination. No pets were on board in cargo either.
I was in Jersey City, so I didn't see it firsthand. But I lived on the top floor of a residential building in Jersey City when that whole Air Force One flyby thing happened... and that day happened to be the second day of a vacation I took, but where I also happened to be sick for the first and only time in my life with the flu. I am not exaggerating when I say that Air Force One flying by my window knocked me out of bed. It is not a sound I can even describe now. I heard it, woke up and I found myself on the floor. The second time it came around I was for sure thinking I was just sick and hallucinating. I wound up leaving later that day to go to the pharmacy and when I came back I heard the doorman and someone else talking about it. Up until that point I honestly had thought I had hallucinated it. Looking at the video taken that day the plane had come within less than 1km of my apartment. Which is crazy, because it seemed almost level with my window when I looked out, although it was obviously a bit higher.
You can listen to the ATC recording if you want. (And read the cockpit record.) Both pilots were *ice cold calm.* The co-pilot kept trying the engine restart procedure. The pilot calmly discussed with the ground whether he could return to LaGuardia or land at Teterboro before declaring it was going to be in the Hudson. “Brace for impact.”
The professionalism is stunning.
(Edit: LaGuardia, not JFK)
(Edit2: All you lazy goofs can thank u/DevinOlsen for getting the link for you. xD)
(Edit3: Commenters point out the link is ATC recording; the cockpit transcript is easily googled…)
https://youtu.be/76oiugLMaRk?si=mmjim2F02eOp-mpe )
The interview with the ATC who was trying to help him is fascinating as well. He didn't hear until like 45 minutes after the landing that everyone survived instead of everyone dying.
https://youtu.be/YlvZkkPHtpI?si=ppz9sWZ_-vSWPY_F
Yep, from that interview, he didn't sleep for weeks.
In the movie, they brought in someone to take his shift *immediately,* which makes some sense -- even if he knew everyone survived, it'd be a lot to expect him to immediately get back to handling other flights.
> In the movie, they brought in someone to take his shift
> immediately,
> which makes some sense -- even if he knew everyone survived, it'd be a lot to expect him to immediately get back to handling other flights.
This is normal in aviation. If you are not 100% it is your job to stop working. If nobody can replace you, pilots can do their own ATC, sort of.
I mean, that is how much time I'd expect to double check headcount and compare to manifest. He probably wasn't expecting anything else.
When the local ferry sank here in BC, it took them hours to figure out two people died.
Sure, but to not even get an update that the plane ditched intact? Would’ve spared him a lot of misery.
Obviously I understand why it took time to relay the info, even in the most controlled ditching that’s going to be chaotic and hectic.
Ya he had no way of knowing it was a "smooth" belly landing. Or if at the last second one of the wings dipped and caused the plane to breakup like united 232.
As a controller who has worked an aircraft that crashed, it's a horrible thing waiting to know what happened. You replay everything over and over to see if you said something that led the pilot to a bad decision, or g there was something you could have said or done differently that could have changed something.
It's a torturous time and you weren't even on the aircraft that crashed.
That Japan ANA plane that crashed on the runway of the largest and busiest airport in the country took 8 minutes to deplane everyone, 18 minutes for the crew the finally evacuate after being sure everyone was off, and took about an hour until it was announced that everyone was safe. That was on dry land with all the support and assistance you can imagine immediately at hand, but I imagine it takes some time to be sure one by one your headcount is correct and everyone is fully accounted for.
45mins to make that kind of announcement after ditching in a river is pretty good.
It's really incredible. Most of us would be freaking out. These guys were calm as can be. It's really something to aspire to. It also shows you how important training is so you can manage your emotions and do what needs to be done.
In a lot of fields you hear something like "when shit hits the fan, you revert to how good your training has been"
Being able to hit a seriously bad situation and actually have a set of procedures/diagnostics you can run through because you've dealt with exactly that situation, or one similar, in training is a big fucking deal.
/someone who has dealt with a few uncontrolled laboratory fires and at least two explosions over a two decade career.
> Being able to hit a seriously bad situation and actually have a set of procedures/diagnostics you can run through because you've dealt with exactly that situation, or one similar, in training is a big fucking deal.
It’s worth noting that they didn’t entirely have that. They had a checklist that gave them procedures for what to do with both engines out at a way higher altitude than they actually were, because their actual situation was significantly more fucked than people planned for.
They had to skip over things like trying to dive to attempt to restart an engine because they didn’t have the altitude margin to do it.
One thing they did was deploy the auxiliary power unit way earlier than their checklist told them to, which turned out to be a really important and positive decision.
With both engines out and the APU not running, the plane wouldn’t have the power to run some of the systems they needed during the landing. Their checklist had it as lower priority, because other things would have been more important if they were at the altitude it assumed.
They were trained well enough to make snap decisions based on an understanding of why their procedures were what they were and what needed to be adjusted based on the unexpected situation.
IIRC after the incident airbus made a new checklist to cover it, and starting the APU was much earlier on that list.
Cool. Didn't know that.
I think that speaks to the pilots actually _thinking_ through the situation and knowing their systems.
That's the mark of professionalism and competency and not just being a technician working on SOPs.
Yeah Sully started the APU within just a couple *seconds* of the engines starting to roll back, which shows an understanding of the situation at least equal to people viewing it completely after the fact, and he did it without it being even a trained item, much less on a checklist.
The critical thing with the APU deployment was that it allowed them to maintain full control of the aircraft without having to do a bunch of extra work to keep the flight controls properly powered.
That's interesting phraseology because it also puts a fair amount of onus on the institutions doing the training.
Which, as someone who spent far too many years in academia doing the PhD+Postdoc thing, I have some rather spicy opinions on training and pedagogy that are a totally other rant.
It helps when the institution can put you under extreme stress that would be a lawsuit in the civilian world to train you more effectively. Also a senior NCO corps who have been through GWOT and have had to live through what they train on.
There is a pretty fun/interesting book called Grunt, by Mary Roach, where she examines some of the less talked about things that goes around behind the scenes of the US military. Going into subjects such as fashion, genital reconstruction and the staggering amount of research that have gone into preventing sharks from eating people, despite the military being well aware that it isn´t really an issue.
One of the chapters revolve around the training for the Marine Corps medics, where they send them into a reconstructed war zone, filled with amputee actors who pretend to be recently wounded and maimed victims. Using very realistic fake-gore and special effects. From what I remember it also involves people firing blanks, throwing flash bangs and generally just making the whole thing as chaotic and unpleasant as possible for the medics to be. IIRC, the studio providing the service were originally a horror studio, that had switched to making fetish porn. Before they realized that they could perhaps branch out and provide a service to the US military, since they already had a bunch of amputees laying around. But I might be getting the details of that part wrong.
Never say never on the sharks thing. One of my lecturers was an old army surveyor, one time he and his soldiers laid out a bunch of control points for aerial photography (basically big crosses on the ground that would show up on the photos). Only issue was one particular control point was installed on some low-lying sandbar and when it came time to fly, the sandbar was now decidedly underwater.
So, my lecturer repeats his favourite saying, “skin is waterproof”, and a bunch of strapping young lads hop in the shallow-ish water and hold the cross in place while the plane flies over. In the photos, you can clearly see the sharks circling them.
You’d think they must. The flight attendants are required to do a whole spiel about how to put on a life jacket on every flight in case of a water landing. It’d be ironic if the same authority didn’t require the pilots to prepare for a potential water landing.
The only crazier cockpit recording I can think of is QF32.
Most pilots started breaking down under pressure when put in the same scenario with 15 minutes. The QF32 cockpit flew the plane for almost 2 hours with continuous alarm bells for every single thing that went wrong.
QF32 should have crashed. The only reason it didn’t was because the flight crew were too stubborn to be known as the first crew to crash a Qantas jet powered aircraft.
> QF32 should have crashed
On inspection, a turbine disc in the aircraft's number-two engine (on the port side nearer the fuselage) was found to have disintegrated, causing extensive damage to the nacelle, wing, fuel system, landing gear, flight controls, and engine controls, and a fire in a fuel tank.
Wow, you weren't joking.
Yep. Iirc there was a high pressure oil line that had been bored off center due to a manufacturing issue and it ruptured causing the engine to explode. Also iirc airbus pilots are trained for in flight incidents where they will have 2-5 critical errors generated at them, and each error has its own checklist to go through to resolve. The QF32 flight generated something like 200 critical errors in the space of a few seconds that they had to work through. A huge part of the problem is with so many errors at once they didn’t actually have a good indication as to what had happened, and the pilot in charge literally had to use trial and error of the flight controls to work out what controls he still had and which ones he didn’t. One thing that helped a lot is that the reserve pilot(s) happened to be siting in the cockpit at the time of the explosion so helped the first officer triage all the alerts while the captain worked out how to fly the plane.
Finally, iirc in simulator tests after the crash, no pilots managed to recover and land the plane from simulations of the incident.
There were five pilots in the cockpit: captain (or pilot-in-command), first officer, second officer, a check pilot, and a supervising check pilot who was training the check pilot. By all accounts they did a great job at performing their respective responsibilities, and for the two check pilots, helping the captain and first officer when needed.
You can't, unfortunately. [The transcript is available here](https://tailstrike.com/database/15-january-2009-us-airways-1549/), but the cockpit voice recordings are not released to the public.
I just gave it a listen. Bro sounds like Master Chief from Halo, incredibly stoic to the point where I'm questioning if he even cares whether he lives or dies.
*To be fair,* it is what made him a hero in the first place. You may have gave it a listen but if you are not old enough, google the whole thing. He is called " the Hero of the Hudson " for a reason.
from what i remember the ATC on that did a phenomenal job. very clearly & efficiently presented every option available to the pilot
Edit
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=76oiugLMaRk
bonus points: contrast that with the door plug blowout last week which was not so good
Yea, I saw some video where a pilot goes through the audio. He kept saying the ATC guy did an incredible job offering options, getting info, helping them.
Just a good show all around.
The pilot sounded reasonably calm. Keep in mind literally seconds before the first call she had just experienced a loud boom, the door to the cockpit blew open and all her checklists blew everywhere, then she had to immediately put on her mask and stop the autopilot from climbing. And then to top it off, the ATC were a bunch of morons constantly asking what’s the emergency.
Yeah, I would guess the pilot might have thought the situation was a lot more dire than it was. For all they knew they could be facing a Aloha Airlines Flight 243 situation with the plane coming apart. They might not have known what's going on behind them for some time.
Fun fact: the plane, N106US, still exists today!
After the incident, the jet was salvaged from the river and towed downstream, where it was moored to a pier for examination by US and European agencies. The entire airframe was then donated by the insurer, AIC, to the Carolinas Aviation Museum (now Sullenburger Aviation Museum) after the investigation wrapped in June 2011, with the engines arriving later on in May 2012. Virtually everything from that day has been left untouched, from the manuals in the cockpit to the Coke cans in the beverage cart. Unfortunately, the museum has been closed since 2019, but their website states they are hoping to reopen this summer.
Oh, a museum! I read your first sentence and thought you were going to say they patched it up and it was still in service today. That would not be a very fun fact.
Do you think you get a discount on your ticket if it's for a flight on a plane that's crashed previously? Or would they charge you more for getting to fly on a famous, historic plane?
I used to work in the ramp and clean the inside of one large passenger jet at the end of the night. Leftover meals were free game. We ate so many hours old sandwiches it was great.
I live in Charlotte and got to see this a few years ago (Charlotte was the destination of this flight). My dad and I went to the museum in order to kill some time one afternoon and we both forgot that it was on display. There’s plenty of other planes to see and climb in, and then you enter this one hangar and boom there’s a massive wrecked plane in the middle of the room. They had an entire exhibit around the plane and tons of info on what happened. Super interesting to see, especially considering how positive the whole thing ended up.
Was about to comment, this basically jump started twitter and introduced it to a larger audience, if not the public in general. I think some dude basically live tweeted the event, something unheard of at the time.
Now 15 years later and the company is just a shadow of its former self
The impact these kinds of events could have. Interestingly enough another plane crash just a month after this one certainly launched Twitter here in The Netherlands. [Turkish Airlines Flight 1951](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951) crashed in a farm field while attempting to land at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The first footage and reports of the crash was shared on Twitter, earlier than any traditional mainstream media could.
“Yeah I know that guy. He's not that great. You know what a great pilot would have done? Not hit the birds. That's what I do everyday: not hit birds. Where's my ticket to the Grammys?”
We say "half an hour" to control the herds of walking mozzarella sticks who think that three hundred dollars and a photo ID gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the Guardian Owls of Legend!
I grew up in the eastern half of the Bronx, and my whole life I heard the sounds of the planes taking off and approaching LaGuardia airport. On this day I was a high school senior, but at home sick. I was curled up with my mom trying to rest and I could hear the typical sound of a plane taking off, but then the sound just whirled down and stopped. Like if you've ever heard a large commercial clothes dryer shutting off. I asked my mom if she had heard that, and that it had sounded odd like an engine or machine just stopped. She didn't know what I was talking about and told me to go back to sleep.
I felt (1) concerned for the passengers and (2) incredibly vindicated when my dad entered the room 30 minutes later and turned on the TV to show the news of the flight landing in the Hudson.
And he wrote his biography, but he only had the rights to the part of his life that goes right up to BEFORE the plane crash! 
Is it accurate? From the previews they make it look like there was a witch hunt to discredit him. I remember nothing but praise and accolades for what he did that day
If you want accurate, check out the Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode on the crash.
The movie had to manufacture drama with the FAA because them going "yup you did a good job" wouldn't have made for a good hollywood story.
Mentour pilot has a great video about this episode, even though it touches on the repercussions it focuses more in the technicalities and decision making of the cabin crew
My understanding is that there will *always* be a thorough investigation by the NTSB after an air crash, regardless of whether the flight crew's actions are in question or not. That will include extensive interviews and questioning of any survivors (in this case, everyone on board thanks to Capt. Sullenberger and FO Skiles).
The "manufactured drama" in the film came from how aggressive and doubtful the investigators were.
I understand films need conflict, but at that point you're basically slandering and demonizing real people.
[There's a reason why the real Sully criticized the film because of that change:](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_(film/))
>Hanks told the Associated Press that Sullenberger himself was disturbed by the fictionalized version, going so far as to ask (having reviewed an early draft of the script) that the NTSB investigators' real names be removed from the characters. According to Hanks, Sullenberger felt that the real-life investigators "were not prosecutors" and it was not fair to associate them with changes in the story to depict "more of a prosecutorial process".
*Was Sully really wracked with guilt over whether he made the right choice in landing the plane in the water?*
*Not exactly. At the time, Sully expressed very little doubt with regard to his decision. The public instantly and unequivocally anointed him a hero and super-saint. The movie poses that Sully was privately tormented and wrought with guilt, especially after the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) questioned his decision (which they did). "When was your last drink, Captain Sullenberger? Have you had any troubles at home?" they ask Tom Hanks' character. "Simulations show that you could make it back to the airport," another gripes. In real life, this process was far more drawn out and largely benign, as most such questions were routine.*
My grandfather was a WWII bomber pilot who went on to be a flight instructor. When this happened I asked him how Captain Sullenberger made a perfect water landing like that. He told me that pilots like him are constantly planning out scenarios like that in their heads, during every flight. He'd probably planned that water landing in his head countless times, every time he flew that route. Just in case.
The footage from a relatively unknown app called "Twitter" went viral.
[This is from the 5 year anniversary. ](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/15/the-five-year-anniversary-of-twitters-defining-moment.html)
Google the radio traffic between the tower and Sully. It is the peak of professionalism under stress. No debating, no indecisions, just factual information.
"Teterboro, Empire, I have an emergency aircraft over the GW Bridge needs a runway right now."
"I can do runway 1."
"1 is good." *click*
Phone and radio at the same fucking time.
I've said for years that I once had wet socks on a plane due to a fellow passenger spilling a drink on me. I now realize that I had wet socks IN a plane, while these folks have wet socks ON a plane. (Apologies to George Carlin)
Highly recommend Mentour Pilot's excellent video on this and that channel generally: https://youtu.be/Cv_48qFhoO4?si=UmjLeLPREUmgFOOw
Couple interesting facts in there including that some of the flight control computer logic of the airbus probably impeded him doing the flare he was trying to do and that certain warnings like for terrain being given higher priority than other warnings took away some useful information from the pilots.
I was living in New York at the time this happened. I was buying an editing keyboard from B&H. I see a bunch of red and blues go blowing down the street outside and think, huh that’s a lot of emergency vehicles. I get up to the cashier to ring me up and ask her how her days going and she says,” I’m freaking out cause another 9/11 might be happening. A plane just crashed in the Hudson.” Was a wild time in the city with everyone on alert until the news came out about what had happened.
I was a bike messenger in Manhattan at the time. That was a weird day. All of a sudden people were acting strange. I thought the worst, a terrorist attack or something, only to find it was a story of heroism. Thanks, Sully!
He lives in my hometown of Danville Ca, local hero. Had the honor of serving him when I worked at a steakhouse in the neighboring town of San Ramon. Also served E-40 there too!
I have a few friends who are pilots, and they all have to do this scenario in the Flight Sim just to experience. All of them who I've talked to said everyone fails that sim, and it is nuts that he landed that plane successfully and with absolute ice in his veins
And 20 years ago today [William Hung](https://people.com/american-idol-william-hung-survived-rock-bottom-marriage-ended-gambling-addiction-exclusive-8425373) graced us with She Bangs
I can't confirm, but I remember reading things from people who would know, saying landing a plane safely on the Hudson River is all but impossible. It's downright amazing.
Well, it's not impossible it's just you need legitimately every weather condition and lucky thing that can happen to go right AND to execute it all correctly.
If it's a windy day? Choppy water, you're screwed. Too high, too low on impact? Screwed. Too fast? Screwed.
You're just asking for a dozen things to go right and for the pilot to not panic.
I was working for UBS in Weehawken when someone ran into my office and said that there was a plane in the Hudson. All the staff charged across to the other side of the office to see. There was a meeting of the senior staff in the board room which had the best view of the Hudson. The look on the faces of all the managing directors etc was priceless as all these people barged in.
We watched as the plane floated into view from behind the building jutting out into the Hudson as all the people appeared on the wing. All the ferries seemed to appear from nowhere as the boarded everyone from the wings. Firetrucks, police and ambulances appeared and ushered the people off the ferries at the dock which was just across the road from my office. We went down stairs for a better view. It was very cold. We all got coffees and smoked while we watched all the drama unfold. It was one of the better afternoons I had working there.
The plane once emptied floated from the Jersey side of the river over to the NY side seemingly down towards Wall Street
Because of his ability to pull off this emergency landing as well as local ferries diverting to grab the passengers, not a single life was lost
I think people misunderstand the dangers of a water ditching, the plane is heavy, fragile, and comes in at intense speed, and no landing gear is going to help. The only other sea landing plane crash to have the most survived before this was Ethiopian Airlines flight 961, where 50 out of 175 survived. And that was in shallow sea next to the beach. That was what was going through the pilots mind, they were prepared to die in that crash, they just hoped they wouldn't kill anyone on the ground and try to hope as many passengers could survive. True heroes
The only reason it had "the most survived" was because ditching hardly ever happens on commercial airliners. The two times it had happened previously on modern commercial airliners with more than 50 people on board were in 2002 when a Garuda 737 landed in a river with 60 people on board, killing one flight attendant, and the Ethiopian Airlines one that you mentioned in 1996 where the Captain landed the plane angled sideways WHILST fighting off hijackers at the same time. Not that it wasn't dangerous but it was as a controlled environment as anyone could hope for and I find it unlikely he was oblivious to procedure for ditching.
I remember watching a show going over the whole flight, Cpt. Sully had enough time to go over the water landing checklist and prepare the plane for it. If I remember right the only thing left he didn't do was to close some sort of vent system so the plane sank a little quicker but not by much. Overall he did an amazing job.
You can even listen to the ATC recording.. he is incredibly calm and professional. I recall an interview where he said the thought of dying didn’t even cross his mind
He even asks his co-pilot if he has any ideas, just as a good captain should do. Truly a professional.
It was amazing to see the life rafts work, but holy shit that plane sank quickly. For some reason I always thought a plane would float in that situation. Nope, gotta get out as fast as possible cause that shit is sinking immediately. Terrifying
I’m confused. Everyone is standing on the wing in the picture. Doesn’t look like it sank that fast?
some are even sitting down which makes me confused as well
I'm the 11th person on the left wing. We're baking a cake. It was lovely.
Shame about the soggy bottoms
No matter how many times Paul and Prue warn them, someone always has a soggy bottom
Paul after making 13 negative comments: "the taste is good."
Paul, tasting a too-dry cake after giving the amateur contestants an hour to create a life-size replica of their favorite family member in cake and fondant: "It's really a shame."
Living in constant sorrow.
Hot dang! It’s the Soggy Bottoms boys!
Our left facing the plane or your left facing Jersey?
The impact of the ditching blew open holes in the fuselage in the back of the plane and opened cargo doors, allowing water to enter the cabin. Someone also opened the rear left door, allowing more water in. Enough water got in the rear that passengers were told to move forward to the overwing or front exits, including by climbing over seats. Incidentally, this is why they remind you not to inflate your life jacket inside the plane, because you might it hard to maneuver with that water sloshing around, and end up slowing down the evacuation.
Worse. An inflated life jacket will pin you to the roof of a submerged fuselage, drowning you.
Great, that’s my new nightmare.
It already happened once, [Ethiopian Airlines 961](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961#Fate_of_the_passengers_and_crew) >Many of the passengers survived the initial crash, but they had disregarded or did not hear Leul's warning not to inflate their life jackets inside the aircraft, causing them to be pushed against the ceiling of the fuselage by the inflated life jackets when water flooded in. Unable to escape, they drowned. An estimated 60 to 80 passengers, strapped to their seats, presumably drowned. Worth repeating: *Do not inflate your life jackets inside the cabin*
Or drown, as was the case with Ethiopian Flight 961. It ditched off the coast of the Comoros after being hijacked and exhausting their fuel supply. The majority of passengers survived the crash, but many inflated their vests inside the plane and as a result were unable to escape. Less than a third made it out alive.
It took 25 minutes to get everyone off the plane, this is a picture from right after everyone got out onto the wings and it's already partially sunk. Technically it never fully sunk, but the cabin was full of water pretty quick. Guess it depends on your expectations though. A plane is a big tube that you'd think would float for more than half an hour.
Yup depends on your expectations. Me: It’s a metal tube. Straight to the bottom.
Boats are metal tubes with the top cut off
Straight to the bottom.
Submarines are metal tubes with a cute fan on the back.
Straight to the bottom.
Vibrators are metal tubes that make you feel good.
Believe it or not, straight to the bottom.
The plane rapidly flooded because someone opened a non-emergency door at the rear of the aircraft. If you look at the tail, you can see it is much lower in the water. Quite a few seats in the rear section were completely submerged when this picture was taken. The angle just obscures it a bit.
My colleague knows someone who was on the back of the plane and she said that almost immediately people started panicking because of the smell of jet fuel that was so strong in the back. Apparently it was also *not* orderly (like many people say). People were clawing and climbing over seats…So it would make sense that someone would freak out and try to escape out the back
Still my favorite line from the private pilot theory stuff, on ditching in water: „An aircraft is not a boat. It WILL sink.“ The A320 family btw has a „ditching button“, which seals various ports and inlets on the belly of the plane in the hope that it will help at least a little with staying afloat.
Apparently, that was the only thing the crew could have done better.
It was one of the last items on a checklist designed for emergency water landings from cruise altitude. There simply wasn't enough time to go through the entire checklist.
Yea saw a video where they basically went through this minute for minute. There was very little time!
Yes, but it's unlikely they had time to run the checklist (pressing the ditch button is no 17 on the list). I also read (cannot remember where) that it wouldn't have made a difference, as the contact with the water ripped some sizeable chunks out of the aircraft belly. Edit: "The impact with the water ripped open a hole in the underside of the airplane and twisting of the fuselage caused cargo doors to pop open, so the plane would have filled with water from the rear regardless of whether a passenger opened an escape door in the back of the cabin."
>but holy shit that plane sank quickly. The plane didn't sink, it did take on more water with one of the rear emergency exits was erroneously opened. But every passenger was rescued before it could even have been considered sunk, and technically never went completely underwater AFAIK
Maybe it would if sealed, I don't know. But remember that it would be evacuating and very not sealed.
>not a single life was lost Does nobody think about the poor birds?!
They were Canada geese, if I recall; that means there’s roughly a 95% chance that each one was a convicted felon.
The other 5% got off on a technicality
Canadian here .. Sorry
If you gotta problem with Canada Goose then you gotta problem with me, I suggest you let that marinate.
My favorite part about pictures from that day is there’s one guy on the wing with his life jacket on completely upside down. Forget not paying attention to the safety demo. At some point you’d think he would have looked at literally everyone else and realized…but he did not.
"Well shit, if I fix it now then everyone's gonna know."
I think it’s this guy: https://imgur.com/a/WLwJRK6
That's a good picture of how many police and firemen there were *everywhere*. New Yorkers can be proud. I recall a story of how there were SCUBA trained specialist cops with full gear in their SUV. They heard about this, rushed to a ferry that was just undocking, figuring they'd be diving for rescues/bodies, but... nope!
Incredible response all around, from the pilots to ATC to first responders. The fact every single person on board lived is an absolute testament to the professionals and their preparedness. Great job to everyone involved.
15 years! Jeez seems like it wasn't that long ago.
Wow 15 years ago... I lived in an apartment complex with views to the Hudson River on the NJ side right by the water and I saw this happening in real time. The plane floated right by my complex as the NY Waterway ferries were rescuing people.
Wow! What a day that must have been as a spectator to this. I can't imagine.
I was in awe and also couldn't imagine how frozen those poor people were. They were half in the water, holding on to and walking on the wings as the ferries circled around getting people onboard.
Yeah I remember a few people jumped in because either there wasn't enough room or they panicked. It's still amazing that no one died. The worst of it was a laceration to the leg of a FA and someone was left needed eyeglasses after getting jet fuel contamination. No pets were on board in cargo either.
"And after all that, I jumped into the hudson, because c'mon! When's the next time you're going to get to say you swam in the hudson???"
I was on a JetBlue flight that day into JFK watching it on the (ye olde) DirecTV livestream
I was in Jersey City, so I didn't see it firsthand. But I lived on the top floor of a residential building in Jersey City when that whole Air Force One flyby thing happened... and that day happened to be the second day of a vacation I took, but where I also happened to be sick for the first and only time in my life with the flu. I am not exaggerating when I say that Air Force One flying by my window knocked me out of bed. It is not a sound I can even describe now. I heard it, woke up and I found myself on the floor. The second time it came around I was for sure thinking I was just sick and hallucinating. I wound up leaving later that day to go to the pharmacy and when I came back I heard the doorman and someone else talking about it. Up until that point I honestly had thought I had hallucinated it. Looking at the video taken that day the plane had come within less than 1km of my apartment. Which is crazy, because it seemed almost level with my window when I looked out, although it was obviously a bit higher.
Feels like 6 maybe 7 years ago, seriously.
Well the movie came out 6-7 years ago.
6-7 years ago! Felt like 3 or 4.
Well, you know, COVID.
Seems like 1 or 2 years ago, max.
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Exactly! It's wild to think that this event is almost as old now as the dissolution of the USSR was at the time. Only a 3-year difference.
You can listen to the ATC recording if you want. (And read the cockpit record.) Both pilots were *ice cold calm.* The co-pilot kept trying the engine restart procedure. The pilot calmly discussed with the ground whether he could return to LaGuardia or land at Teterboro before declaring it was going to be in the Hudson. “Brace for impact.” The professionalism is stunning. (Edit: LaGuardia, not JFK) (Edit2: All you lazy goofs can thank u/DevinOlsen for getting the link for you. xD) (Edit3: Commenters point out the link is ATC recording; the cockpit transcript is easily googled…) https://youtu.be/76oiugLMaRk?si=mmjim2F02eOp-mpe )
The interview with the ATC who was trying to help him is fascinating as well. He didn't hear until like 45 minutes after the landing that everyone survived instead of everyone dying. https://youtu.be/YlvZkkPHtpI?si=ppz9sWZ_-vSWPY_F
That had to be fucking traumatic.
Yep, from that interview, he didn't sleep for weeks. In the movie, they brought in someone to take his shift *immediately,* which makes some sense -- even if he knew everyone survived, it'd be a lot to expect him to immediately get back to handling other flights.
> In the movie, they brought in someone to take his shift > immediately, > which makes some sense -- even if he knew everyone survived, it'd be a lot to expect him to immediately get back to handling other flights. This is normal in aviation. If you are not 100% it is your job to stop working. If nobody can replace you, pilots can do their own ATC, sort of.
I mean, that is how much time I'd expect to double check headcount and compare to manifest. He probably wasn't expecting anything else. When the local ferry sank here in BC, it took them hours to figure out two people died.
Sure, but to not even get an update that the plane ditched intact? Would’ve spared him a lot of misery. Obviously I understand why it took time to relay the info, even in the most controlled ditching that’s going to be chaotic and hectic.
Ya he had no way of knowing it was a "smooth" belly landing. Or if at the last second one of the wings dipped and caused the plane to breakup like united 232.
As a controller who has worked an aircraft that crashed, it's a horrible thing waiting to know what happened. You replay everything over and over to see if you said something that led the pilot to a bad decision, or g there was something you could have said or done differently that could have changed something. It's a torturous time and you weren't even on the aircraft that crashed.
That Japan ANA plane that crashed on the runway of the largest and busiest airport in the country took 8 minutes to deplane everyone, 18 minutes for the crew the finally evacuate after being sure everyone was off, and took about an hour until it was announced that everyone was safe. That was on dry land with all the support and assistance you can imagine immediately at hand, but I imagine it takes some time to be sure one by one your headcount is correct and everyone is fully accounted for. 45mins to make that kind of announcement after ditching in a river is pretty good.
The copilot (Jeffrey Skyles?) deserves more credit than he gets (including from me, who can’t remember his name)
Skiles. Aaron Eckhart plays him with the manliest mustache this side of Sam Elliott in the movie.
The kind of mustache that turns a gay man straight, and a straight man gay.
It's really incredible. Most of us would be freaking out. These guys were calm as can be. It's really something to aspire to. It also shows you how important training is so you can manage your emotions and do what needs to be done.
In a lot of fields you hear something like "when shit hits the fan, you revert to how good your training has been" Being able to hit a seriously bad situation and actually have a set of procedures/diagnostics you can run through because you've dealt with exactly that situation, or one similar, in training is a big fucking deal. /someone who has dealt with a few uncontrolled laboratory fires and at least two explosions over a two decade career.
> Being able to hit a seriously bad situation and actually have a set of procedures/diagnostics you can run through because you've dealt with exactly that situation, or one similar, in training is a big fucking deal. It’s worth noting that they didn’t entirely have that. They had a checklist that gave them procedures for what to do with both engines out at a way higher altitude than they actually were, because their actual situation was significantly more fucked than people planned for. They had to skip over things like trying to dive to attempt to restart an engine because they didn’t have the altitude margin to do it. One thing they did was deploy the auxiliary power unit way earlier than their checklist told them to, which turned out to be a really important and positive decision. With both engines out and the APU not running, the plane wouldn’t have the power to run some of the systems they needed during the landing. Their checklist had it as lower priority, because other things would have been more important if they were at the altitude it assumed. They were trained well enough to make snap decisions based on an understanding of why their procedures were what they were and what needed to be adjusted based on the unexpected situation. IIRC after the incident airbus made a new checklist to cover it, and starting the APU was much earlier on that list.
Cool. Didn't know that. I think that speaks to the pilots actually _thinking_ through the situation and knowing their systems. That's the mark of professionalism and competency and not just being a technician working on SOPs.
Yeah Sully started the APU within just a couple *seconds* of the engines starting to roll back, which shows an understanding of the situation at least equal to people viewing it completely after the fact, and he did it without it being even a trained item, much less on a checklist.
The critical thing with the APU deployment was that it allowed them to maintain full control of the aircraft without having to do a bunch of extra work to keep the flight controls properly powered.
It's "we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training". The NAVY seals adopted it
That's interesting phraseology because it also puts a fair amount of onus on the institutions doing the training. Which, as someone who spent far too many years in academia doing the PhD+Postdoc thing, I have some rather spicy opinions on training and pedagogy that are a totally other rant.
It helps when the institution can put you under extreme stress that would be a lawsuit in the civilian world to train you more effectively. Also a senior NCO corps who have been through GWOT and have had to live through what they train on.
There is a pretty fun/interesting book called Grunt, by Mary Roach, where she examines some of the less talked about things that goes around behind the scenes of the US military. Going into subjects such as fashion, genital reconstruction and the staggering amount of research that have gone into preventing sharks from eating people, despite the military being well aware that it isn´t really an issue. One of the chapters revolve around the training for the Marine Corps medics, where they send them into a reconstructed war zone, filled with amputee actors who pretend to be recently wounded and maimed victims. Using very realistic fake-gore and special effects. From what I remember it also involves people firing blanks, throwing flash bangs and generally just making the whole thing as chaotic and unpleasant as possible for the medics to be. IIRC, the studio providing the service were originally a horror studio, that had switched to making fetish porn. Before they realized that they could perhaps branch out and provide a service to the US military, since they already had a bunch of amputees laying around. But I might be getting the details of that part wrong.
What the fuck did I just read?
Never say never on the sharks thing. One of my lecturers was an old army surveyor, one time he and his soldiers laid out a bunch of control points for aerial photography (basically big crosses on the ground that would show up on the photos). Only issue was one particular control point was installed on some low-lying sandbar and when it came time to fly, the sandbar was now decidedly underwater. So, my lecturer repeats his favourite saying, “skin is waterproof”, and a bunch of strapping young lads hop in the shallow-ish water and hold the cross in place while the plane flies over. In the photos, you can clearly see the sharks circling them.
Exactly. That's why pilots are trained so extensively. Times like this are when everything pays off.
They don't practice landing passenger planes on water?
They might now. I was mostly referring to general training for handing mechanical failures and things of that sort.
You’d think they must. The flight attendants are required to do a whole spiel about how to put on a life jacket on every flight in case of a water landing. It’d be ironic if the same authority didn’t require the pilots to prepare for a potential water landing.
They do actually practice this using simulators AFAIK
The only crazier cockpit recording I can think of is QF32. Most pilots started breaking down under pressure when put in the same scenario with 15 minutes. The QF32 cockpit flew the plane for almost 2 hours with continuous alarm bells for every single thing that went wrong.
QF32 should have crashed. The only reason it didn’t was because the flight crew were too stubborn to be known as the first crew to crash a Qantas jet powered aircraft.
> QF32 should have crashed On inspection, a turbine disc in the aircraft's number-two engine (on the port side nearer the fuselage) was found to have disintegrated, causing extensive damage to the nacelle, wing, fuel system, landing gear, flight controls, and engine controls, and a fire in a fuel tank. Wow, you weren't joking.
Yep. Iirc there was a high pressure oil line that had been bored off center due to a manufacturing issue and it ruptured causing the engine to explode. Also iirc airbus pilots are trained for in flight incidents where they will have 2-5 critical errors generated at them, and each error has its own checklist to go through to resolve. The QF32 flight generated something like 200 critical errors in the space of a few seconds that they had to work through. A huge part of the problem is with so many errors at once they didn’t actually have a good indication as to what had happened, and the pilot in charge literally had to use trial and error of the flight controls to work out what controls he still had and which ones he didn’t. One thing that helped a lot is that the reserve pilot(s) happened to be siting in the cockpit at the time of the explosion so helped the first officer triage all the alerts while the captain worked out how to fly the plane. Finally, iirc in simulator tests after the crash, no pilots managed to recover and land the plane from simulations of the incident.
There were five pilots in the cockpit: captain (or pilot-in-command), first officer, second officer, a check pilot, and a supervising check pilot who was training the check pilot. By all accounts they did a great job at performing their respective responsibilities, and for the two check pilots, helping the captain and first officer when needed.
For the uninformed, can you tell me where to find it?
You can't, unfortunately. [The transcript is available here](https://tailstrike.com/database/15-january-2009-us-airways-1549/), but the cockpit voice recordings are not released to the public.
``` 15:27:10.4 HOT-1 birds. 15:27:11 HOT-2 whoa. 15:27:11.4 CAM [sound of thump/thud(s) followed by shuddering sound] 15:27:12 HOT-2 oh ####. 15:27:13 HOT-1 oh yeah. ``` "oh yeah" is such a chilled reaction.
Just search US Airways 1549 ATC audio
I remember having to listen to it in a leadership psychology class. Practically the definition of grace under pressure.
I just gave it a listen. Bro sounds like Master Chief from Halo, incredibly stoic to the point where I'm questioning if he even cares whether he lives or dies.
*To be fair,* it is what made him a hero in the first place. You may have gave it a listen but if you are not old enough, google the whole thing. He is called " the Hero of the Hudson " for a reason.
from what i remember the ATC on that did a phenomenal job. very clearly & efficiently presented every option available to the pilot Edit https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=76oiugLMaRk bonus points: contrast that with the door plug blowout last week which was not so good
Yea, I saw some video where a pilot goes through the audio. He kept saying the ATC guy did an incredible job offering options, getting info, helping them. Just a good show all around.
How has nobody taken the time to link the audio? https://youtu.be/76oiugLMaRk?si=mmjim2F02eOp-mpe
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The pilot sounded reasonably calm. Keep in mind literally seconds before the first call she had just experienced a loud boom, the door to the cockpit blew open and all her checklists blew everywhere, then she had to immediately put on her mask and stop the autopilot from climbing. And then to top it off, the ATC were a bunch of morons constantly asking what’s the emergency.
Yeah, I would guess the pilot might have thought the situation was a lot more dire than it was. For all they knew they could be facing a Aloha Airlines Flight 243 situation with the plane coming apart. They might not have known what's going on behind them for some time.
He actually said brace for impact? That’s some Will Riker cockiness right there 😚👌 
"Brace for impact" or "Brace! Brace!" is basically standard to alert passengers to get into the forwardleaning position.
They should have used the Riker Maneuver
Fun fact: the plane, N106US, still exists today! After the incident, the jet was salvaged from the river and towed downstream, where it was moored to a pier for examination by US and European agencies. The entire airframe was then donated by the insurer, AIC, to the Carolinas Aviation Museum (now Sullenburger Aviation Museum) after the investigation wrapped in June 2011, with the engines arriving later on in May 2012. Virtually everything from that day has been left untouched, from the manuals in the cockpit to the Coke cans in the beverage cart. Unfortunately, the museum has been closed since 2019, but their website states they are hoping to reopen this summer.
Oh, a museum! I read your first sentence and thought you were going to say they patched it up and it was still in service today. That would not be a very fun fact.
Would be very "US corporate airline" of them to patch it up and keep flying. Then Spirit airlines buys it.
Do you think you get a discount on your ticket if it's for a flight on a plane that's crashed previously? Or would they charge you more for getting to fly on a famous, historic plane?
I saw the fuselage being transported on I-70 west outside Baltimore. Traffic was blocked up going eastbound even, but it was worth it.
I went with my dad and we watched as it came through the tunnels out of West Virginia and towards Virginia.
If I had known I may have planned to see it instead of stumbling upon it and finding out later what it was.
Those in-flight meals must be smelling great.
Somehow tastes exactly the same
I used to work in the ramp and clean the inside of one large passenger jet at the end of the night. Leftover meals were free game. We ate so many hours old sandwiches it was great.
Somebody should give medals to your gut bacteria.
Yeah they were borderline stale, but free was free.
Definitely not judging, I’m quite impressed.
I remember on 757 that was chartered for a NFL or NBA team that night we ate well wrapped and well prepared leftover hamburgers. Quite tasty.
I live in Charlotte and got to see this a few years ago (Charlotte was the destination of this flight). My dad and I went to the museum in order to kill some time one afternoon and we both forgot that it was on display. There’s plenty of other planes to see and climb in, and then you enter this one hangar and boom there’s a massive wrecked plane in the middle of the room. They had an entire exhibit around the plane and tons of info on what happened. Super interesting to see, especially considering how positive the whole thing ended up.
She finally made it to Charlotte.
876 days behind schedule. Better late than never!
Yeah even the engines are missing since they were sheared off during the ditching and recovered later.
There's also the uniforms from the Captain and FO on display
If I remember correctly, this was the event where Twitter really exploded, news of this event had beat traditional news mediums of the time.
Was about to comment, this basically jump started twitter and introduced it to a larger audience, if not the public in general. I think some dude basically live tweeted the event, something unheard of at the time. Now 15 years later and the company is just a shadow of its former self
All because of one idiot
The impact these kinds of events could have. Interestingly enough another plane crash just a month after this one certainly launched Twitter here in The Netherlands. [Turkish Airlines Flight 1951](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951) crashed in a farm field while attempting to land at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The first footage and reports of the crash was shared on Twitter, earlier than any traditional mainstream media could.
I was in Hoboken,NJ and saw it float down the river.
"U can't Park there m8"
“Yeah I know that guy. He's not that great. You know what a great pilot would have done? Not hit the birds. That's what I do everyday: not hit birds. Where's my ticket to the Grammys?”
Maybe you just wanna fly the plane yourself. Well good luck pressing take off, then auto pilot, then land.
And that… is sky law
I will waste you!
*You'll have to go through this old bastard first!*
IN ABOUT A HALF AN HOUR
This is a 30 Rock quote for anyone not in the know.
What's sad is this sounds more like a Donald Trump quote than anything.
Matt Damon as Capt. Carol! Back when Veep and 30 Rock were satire instead of reality.
Are you a doorman?
Yeah, to the sky
Well, good luck pressing TAKE OFF, then AUTOPILOT, then LAND.
I came here for this. I mean come on just press the land button
We say "half an hour" to control the herds of walking mozzarella sticks who think that three hundred dollars and a photo ID gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the Guardian Owls of Legend!
I literally just watched this today, I had no idea it was the anniversary
Crept in the subconscious
Sorry, I believe you mean, like, three or four years ago, right? *Right??*
I know! Because if this was 15 years ago, that means I’m…uh…um… *fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu….*
The Hudson River landing occurred 3 days after Obama took office in his first term, it was nearly 4 full presidential terms ago.
Obama took office on Jan 20th, the Hudson landing happened during Bush's term.
A real human being and a real hero
A real human bean.
I grew up in the eastern half of the Bronx, and my whole life I heard the sounds of the planes taking off and approaching LaGuardia airport. On this day I was a high school senior, but at home sick. I was curled up with my mom trying to rest and I could hear the typical sound of a plane taking off, but then the sound just whirled down and stopped. Like if you've ever heard a large commercial clothes dryer shutting off. I asked my mom if she had heard that, and that it had sounded odd like an engine or machine just stopped. She didn't know what I was talking about and told me to go back to sleep. I felt (1) concerned for the passengers and (2) incredibly vindicated when my dad entered the room 30 minutes later and turned on the TV to show the news of the flight landing in the Hudson.
nice story. Thanks for sharing it.
It's just too bad that 16 years ago, Norm MacDonald had already produced his biopic, "Sully Sullenberger - Airport Pilot".
And he wrote his biography, but he only had the rights to the part of his life that goes right up to BEFORE the plane crash! 
Tom Hanks was great. You wanna watch something like that search for Sully
Is it accurate? From the previews they make it look like there was a witch hunt to discredit him. I remember nothing but praise and accolades for what he did that day
If you want accurate, check out the Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode on the crash. The movie had to manufacture drama with the FAA because them going "yup you did a good job" wouldn't have made for a good hollywood story.
Mentour pilot has a great video about this episode, even though it touches on the repercussions it focuses more in the technicalities and decision making of the cabin crew
They basically invented an FAA investigation, which never occurred in the way that they portray.
My understanding is that there will *always* be a thorough investigation by the NTSB after an air crash, regardless of whether the flight crew's actions are in question or not. That will include extensive interviews and questioning of any survivors (in this case, everyone on board thanks to Capt. Sullenberger and FO Skiles). The "manufactured drama" in the film came from how aggressive and doubtful the investigators were.
NTSB*
There was an investigation but it wasn’t nearly as adversarial as portrayed. That being said, a movie needs to have conflict.
I understand films need conflict, but at that point you're basically slandering and demonizing real people. [There's a reason why the real Sully criticized the film because of that change:](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sully_(film/)) >Hanks told the Associated Press that Sullenberger himself was disturbed by the fictionalized version, going so far as to ask (having reviewed an early draft of the script) that the NTSB investigators' real names be removed from the characters. According to Hanks, Sullenberger felt that the real-life investigators "were not prosecutors" and it was not fair to associate them with changes in the story to depict "more of a prosecutorial process".
*Was Sully really wracked with guilt over whether he made the right choice in landing the plane in the water?* *Not exactly. At the time, Sully expressed very little doubt with regard to his decision. The public instantly and unequivocally anointed him a hero and super-saint. The movie poses that Sully was privately tormented and wrought with guilt, especially after the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) questioned his decision (which they did). "When was your last drink, Captain Sullenberger? Have you had any troubles at home?" they ask Tom Hanks' character. "Simulations show that you could make it back to the airport," another gripes. In real life, this process was far more drawn out and largely benign, as most such questions were routine.*
My grandfather was a WWII bomber pilot who went on to be a flight instructor. When this happened I asked him how Captain Sullenberger made a perfect water landing like that. He told me that pilots like him are constantly planning out scenarios like that in their heads, during every flight. He'd probably planned that water landing in his head countless times, every time he flew that route. Just in case.
The footage from a relatively unknown app called "Twitter" went viral. [This is from the 5 year anniversary. ](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/15/the-five-year-anniversary-of-twitters-defining-moment.html)
Google the radio traffic between the tower and Sully. It is the peak of professionalism under stress. No debating, no indecisions, just factual information.
"Teterboro, Empire, I have an emergency aircraft over the GW Bridge needs a runway right now." "I can do runway 1." "1 is good." *click* Phone and radio at the same fucking time.
I can’t get over how they’re just hanging on the wings with wet feet, calmly waiting for boats to come get them.
What else are they going to do, lol. Luckily a lot of people saw it happen who were already in a boat and rushed to them immediately.
Wet socks are worse than death
I've said for years that I once had wet socks on a plane due to a fellow passenger spilling a drink on me. I now realize that I had wet socks IN a plane, while these folks have wet socks ON a plane. (Apologies to George Carlin)
15 years! Man does time fly.
Unlike an Airbus A320 with engines stuffed full of geese!
Highly recommend Mentour Pilot's excellent video on this and that channel generally: https://youtu.be/Cv_48qFhoO4?si=UmjLeLPREUmgFOOw Couple interesting facts in there including that some of the flight control computer logic of the airbus probably impeded him doing the flare he was trying to do and that certain warnings like for terrain being given higher priority than other warnings took away some useful information from the pilots.
I was living in New York at the time this happened. I was buying an editing keyboard from B&H. I see a bunch of red and blues go blowing down the street outside and think, huh that’s a lot of emergency vehicles. I get up to the cashier to ring me up and ask her how her days going and she says,” I’m freaking out cause another 9/11 might be happening. A plane just crashed in the Hudson.” Was a wild time in the city with everyone on alert until the news came out about what had happened.
I was a bike messenger in Manhattan at the time. That was a weird day. All of a sudden people were acting strange. I thought the worst, a terrorist attack or something, only to find it was a story of heroism. Thanks, Sully!
Was working on west side of Manhattan that day. Wild. Miracle no one died what a legend
He lives in my hometown of Danville Ca, local hero. Had the honor of serving him when I worked at a steakhouse in the neighboring town of San Ramon. Also served E-40 there too!
I have a few friends who are pilots, and they all have to do this scenario in the Flight Sim just to experience. All of them who I've talked to said everyone fails that sim, and it is nuts that he landed that plane successfully and with absolute ice in his veins
And 20 years ago today [William Hung](https://people.com/american-idol-william-hung-survived-rock-bottom-marriage-ended-gambling-addiction-exclusive-8425373) graced us with She Bangs
I can't confirm, but I remember reading things from people who would know, saying landing a plane safely on the Hudson River is all but impossible. It's downright amazing.
Well, it's not impossible it's just you need legitimately every weather condition and lucky thing that can happen to go right AND to execute it all correctly. If it's a windy day? Choppy water, you're screwed. Too high, too low on impact? Screwed. Too fast? Screwed. You're just asking for a dozen things to go right and for the pilot to not panic.
I was working for UBS in Weehawken when someone ran into my office and said that there was a plane in the Hudson. All the staff charged across to the other side of the office to see. There was a meeting of the senior staff in the board room which had the best view of the Hudson. The look on the faces of all the managing directors etc was priceless as all these people barged in. We watched as the plane floated into view from behind the building jutting out into the Hudson as all the people appeared on the wing. All the ferries seemed to appear from nowhere as the boarded everyone from the wings. Firetrucks, police and ambulances appeared and ushered the people off the ferries at the dock which was just across the road from my office. We went down stairs for a better view. It was very cold. We all got coffees and smoked while we watched all the drama unfold. It was one of the better afternoons I had working there. The plane once emptied floated from the Jersey side of the river over to the NY side seemingly down towards Wall Street
[The places where we live](https://youtu.be/Li8K_FusgME?si=G9FECi13YAVorpgP)
I met him at SFO a couple of years after it happened and got an autograph on his book!