NEW YORK — The pilot who ditched his jetliner in the Hudson River and saved the lives of everyone on board said he had a "sickening" feeling when a flock of birds disabled both engines with violent thuds, crippling the plane at 3,000 feet over the nation's most populous city.
Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger said in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that the sound of the geese hitting the plane and the smell of burning poultry entering the cabin was "shocking."
"Oh, you could hear them," he said. "Loud thumps. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm I'd ever heard growing up in Texas."
The interview with Sullenberger and the other four crew members was broadcast Sunday, their first since US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the frigid water Jan. 15.
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Sullenberger said he took control of the aircraft from co-pilot First Officer Jeff Skiles seconds after the birds disabled the Airbus 320's two engines.
"It was obvious to me from the very moment that we lost the thrust that this was a critical situation. Losing thrust on both engines, at a low speed, at a low altitude, over one of the most densely populated areas on the planet — yes, I knew it was a very challenging situation," Sullenberger told CBS' Katie Couric.
He said he had a realization within seconds. "This, unlike every other flight I'd had for 42 years, was probably not going to end with the airplane undamaged on a runway."
Sullenberger declared a "mayday" to controllers and first thought to return to LaGuardia, where he'd departed about two minutes earlier. Then he asked whether Teterboro airport in New Jersey was an option. But he realized that there wasn't enough energy left to keep the 50-ton jetliner aloft long enough.
"I saw the river ahead of me. Long, wide with boats at the south end. We were trained to land in the water near other boats to facilitate rescue," he said. "That was where the airplane was headed, and that was a good place to go.
"I needed to touch down with the wings exactly level. I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up. I needed to touch down at a descent rate that was survivable. And I needed to touch down just above our minimum flying speed but not below it. And I needed to make all these things happen simultaneously."
Sullenberger said that in the aftermath of the emergency landing, he lay awake at night second-guessing his performance, even though all 155 people aboard survived.
He said he initially had trouble forgiving himself because he thought he could have done something different in that "critical situation."
"The first few nights were the worst," Sullenberger said. "When the 'what ifs' started."
He said he no longer regrets his actions that day, calling his decision to land in the river "the only viable alternative" to attempting a return to LaGuardia Airport or landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
"Did you, at any point, pray?" Couric asked.
"I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane," he said.
The flight attendants said they didn't know they were landing in the water until it happened.
"When I got out of my seat and saw that water, it was the most shocked I've ever been in my life," flight attendant Doreen Welsh said, adding that her emotions "had gone through, within seconds, accepting death and seeing life."
She said she then "went crazy" and started yelling and pushing people to get them out because the impact tore a hole in the plane's tail and water poured into the cabin.
"And as I was getting up, I thought I might actually live," Welsh said, " 'cause a second ago, I thought I was gone."
After the landing, a frightened passenger pushed her aside and unlatched the rear door.
"Just enough that the water came flooding in," said Welsh, in an interview conducted last Monday in a hangar at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport with the other four crew members of the flight after reuniting with about 50 passengers in a Charlotte hotel ballroom.
"And I went back twice and tried to re-close it. It would only go so far. It wouldn't stop, and the water was just rising.
"You know, garbage cans were floating, coffeepots were floating. . . . It was crazy back there."
Welsh, who suffered a deep leg gash in the crash, said the rear of the aircraft, the first to touch down in the Hudson, was shaken violently on impact.
Sullenberger landed the plane near two ferry terminals, and rescue boats appeared within minutes to take the 150 passengers and five crew members to safety.
When the pilot got official confirmation that everyone had survived, "I felt like the weight of the universe had been lifted off my heart," he said.
The crew met some of the passengers and their relatives at a reunion in Charlotte, N.C., the destination of Flight 1549.
"More than one woman came up to me and said, 'Thank you for not making me a widow,' " Sullenberger said. " 'Thank you for allowing my 3-year-old son to have a father.' "
One passenger asked Sullenberger to sign his shirt.
"Where, right there?" Sullenberger replied. "You got it. Let me make it big and bold."
"It was obvious to me from the very moment that we lost the thrust that this was a critical situation. Losing thrust on both engines, at a low speed, at a low altitude, over one of the most densely populated areas on the planet — yes, I knew it was a very challenging situation."
Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger,
US Airways Flight 1549 pilot
