All 155 survive as airliner plunges into Hudson
By David B. Caruso
And Marcus Franklin
The Associated Press
NEW YORK ─ As the plane descended over New York City, its engines crippled, people ran through the aisle and bowed their heads to pray.
One woman sent a text message to her husband: "My plane is crashing." Passengers were instructed to brace for impact.
Then the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 brought it down safely ─ floated it, one man said ─ into the frigid Hudson River. One survivor said the impact felt like little more than a rear-end car collision.
People are also reading…
All 155 people on board survived, plucked to safety by a small fleet of Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that converged on the crash site within minutes. A paramedic said a woman had two broken legs, but there were no other major injuries.
"We had a miracle on 34th Street," Gov. David Paterson said. "I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson."
The plane, which had left LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., on a flight that ultimately lasted only five minutes, was disabled when it collided with a flock of birds.
The pilot reported the strike and told air traffic controllers he needed to return to La Guardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.
Instead, for reasons not immediately clear, the pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., chose to guide it into the Hudson, where the water temperature was 36 degrees.
Sullenberger "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it ─ I tell you what, the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.
"Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he said.
In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.
The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived, including Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that happened to be nearby. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.
…
The crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight survived.
