American Airlines marks 10th anniversary of Miracle on the Hudson

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  • Mark Caswell
    Keymaster

    “Flight 1549 quickly became known as the Miracle on the Hudson, but all of us know that what Capt. Sullenberger, First Officer Jeff Skiles and Flight Attendants Sheila Dail, Donna Dent and Doreen Welsh did on the Hudson was not a miracle, but an example of great skill and professionalism produced by years of training and experience.”

    http://news.aa.com/news/news-details/2019/American-Airlines-Marks-the-10th-Anniversary-of-the-Miracle-on-the-Hudson/default.aspx

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    GivingupBA
    Participant

    I remember Sullenberger being interviewed on TV afterwards. He said he wished people would stop calling him a hero, because all he did was his job exactly as he had been trained to do.

    Personally I’ve always had the highest respect for the professionalism of aircrew, and am very grateful for them.

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    Tom Otley
    Keymaster

    I enjoyed the film as well.

    It was over-dramatised in the way the legal machinations were made to seem as though he was in serious danger of being found at fault for his actions, but overall it was a decent film.


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    Yes the crew did exactly what they had been trained to do and they did it bloody well.

    What I think was very extraordinary – and it has never been mentioned whether a similar emergency had been practised in a simulator before hand, is the aircraft remained virtually unsubmerged, everyone was able to stand on the wings and the aircraft didn’t break up. May not be a ‘miracle’ – but certainly not your average crash landing after a double engine failure on climb out.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    capetonianm
    Participant

    I enjoyed the film too, although as Tom says, it was over-dramatised, but that’s Hollywood.

    Apart from the obvious skill and decision making of the flight deck crew, there was an element of good fortune in that the weather favoured the ditching as the water was not too choppy.

    There have been a couple of incidents of commercial a/c landing more or less intact on water with no fatalities or serious injuries. One was a TU-154 (?) on the River Neva in LED. Those old Russian a/c were built like tanks!

    There was an ET ditching into water off the Comoros, due to fuel exhaustion, and about a third of those on board survived.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    iflypremium
    Participant

    Another miracle is how much spare cash AA have to waste.

    At the annual (sponsored by The Times) Destinations Event held in Manchester over the last 4 days, AA had a stand in the USA Pavilion.

    I use the word stand very loosely as there was no AA branding, posters, giveaways, model aircraft..not even a USA flag. Not a thing to encourage you to visit. All there was, was a stack of small cards and a fishbowl to enter a competition and place your card in the bowl.

    AA must have a lot of cash to splash on this ghost stand.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    canucklad
    Participant

    I seem to re-call a Garuda flight successfully ditching in a remote river after the engines stopped during a severe thunderstorm, years before the £Miracle on the Hudson”
    I wonder if Garuda self promoted that flight crews heroics on the 10th anniversary?

    There was a bit of a laborious , yet intriguing 2 hour documentary on the Hudson incident recently screened on National Geographic
    Sully and crew definitely deserved the praise as did the cabin crew, alas the same can’t be said for some of the passengers behaviour.
    having said that, totally understandable why some would react in such a hysterical manner

    Well worth the watch on catch up, with one finger on the fast forward button.

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