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Pilot praised for saving lives as jetliner lands on NY river
Source: Agencies | January 17, 2009, Saturday | Print Edition
INVESTIGATORS brought in a giant crane and a barge yesterday to help pull a US Airways jetliner from the Hudson River in New York, and survivors among the 155 people aboard recounted tales of horror and hailed the pilot as a hero who delivered them from certain death.
While on a rescue raft with pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III in the frigid cold, passenger Billy Campbell said he went to him.
"I leaned over and grabbed his arm, and I said I just want to thank you on behalf of all of us," Campbell told NBC television yesterday. "He just said, 'You're welcome.'"
National Transportation Safety Board investigators will now focus on recovering the black box from the plane and interviewing the crew about the accident - apparently caused by birds that slammed into the plane's two engines.
The Airbus A320, built in 1999, was tethered to a pier on the tip of Lower Manhattan yesterday morning. Only a gray wing tip could be seen jutting out of the water near a Lower Manhattan sea wall.
Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles and crew have become instant heroes for guiding the plane to safety and safely evacuating the passengers. Sullenberger's wife told CNN she hadn't been watching the news and was stunned to hear about the ordeal from her husband after it was all over.
"I've heard Sully say to people, 'It's rare for an airline pilot to have an incident in their career,'" Lorrie Sullenberger said. "When he called me he said, 'There's been an accident.' At first I thought it was something minor, but then he told me the circumstances and my body started shaking and I rushed to get our daughters out of school."
Sullenberger, 57, of Danville, California, is a former Air Force fighter pilot who has flown for US Airways for 29 years. He also runs a safety consulting firm.
US Airways Chief Executive Doug Parker said in a statement it was premature to speculate about the cause. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said there was no immediate indication the incident was "anything other than an accident."
On his morning radio show yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city "got away with a miracle."
It was a chain of improbability. Birds tangle with airplanes regularly but rarely bring down commercial aircraft. Jet engines sometimes fail, but usually not both at once. Pilots train for a range of emergencies, but few, if any, have ever successfully ditched a jet in one of the busiest waterways without any life-threatening injuries.
If the accident was hard to imagine, so was the result: Besides one victim with two broken legs, there were no other reports of serious injuries to the 155 people aboard.
The Airbus A320, bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, took off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26pm on Thursday. Less than a minute later, the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Passengers quickly realized something was terrifyingly wrong.
"I heard an explosion, and I saw flames coming from the left wing, and I thought, 'This isn't good,'" said Dave Sanderson, 47, who was heading home to Charlotte from a business trip. "Then it was just controlled chaos. People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way."
Then came an ominous warning from the captain: "Brace for impact because we're going down," according to passenger Jeff Kolodjay, 31.
The 150 passengers and five crew members were forced to escape as the plane quickly became submerged up to its windows in water that was 2 degrees Celsius. Dozens stood on the aircraft's wings on a minus 7 Celsius day, one of the coldest of the winter, as commuter ferries and Coast Guard vessels converged to rescue them.