What do you think of this fact?
Losing one engine right after takeoff is a pilot’s nightmare. Losing both, at under 3,000 feet above New York City, sounds like the end of the story. For the 155 people on US Airways Flight 1549, it was the start of one of the most famous rescues in aviation history.
Geese versus jet engines
On January 15, 2009, an Airbus A320 took off from LaGuardia Airport, bound for Charlotte. Less than two minutes later, climbing through about 2,800 feet, it flew into a flock of Canada geese. According to the FAA, at least two geese weighing roughly eight pounds (about 3.6 kilograms) each went into each engine core. Both engines lost almost all of their thrust.
The emergency checklist for a double engine failure was written for high altitude, not for a jet this low. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger concluded that the plane would not safely reach any airport. When air traffic control offered him a runway at Teterboro, his answer was short: “We can’t do it.”
A runway made of river
About three and a half minutes after the bird strike, the jet touched down on the Hudson River, about 8.5 miles (around 14 kilometers) from LaGuardia. The water was around 5 degrees Celsius (41 °F). People climbed out onto the wings, and the front slides were detached and used as rafts, just as they were designed to be.
Then the city itself turned into the rescue team. Commuter ferries from New York Waterway were first on the scene: the first one reached the plane within three minutes of the ditching, and six more arrived within ten minutes. Within about 20 minutes, everyone had been rescued. All 155 people, 150 passengers and five crew members, survived.
Bonus fact: The entire flight, from takeoff to touchdown on the river, lasted five minutes and eight seconds.
The investigation that followed dug deep into how planes are certified for ditching and how crews train for it. The FAA also noted that only about 20 percent of the life vests on board were actually used. A flock of geese, a cold river and a fleet of commuter ferries: that was the whole cast of this rescue.