PrairiePundit

NY Times: The picture painted of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III has been one of steely calm in the moments before he guided US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River, but inside, he was terrified, he said in his first in-depth interview since the Jan. 15 crash landing. “I can’t believe this is happening,” Captain Sullenberger thought, he told Katie Couric on Sunday night’s broadcast of “60 Minutes” on CBS. “This doesn’t happen to me.” Asked to explain, he said, “I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn’t crash an airplane.” He said he knew the plane was in trouble when he heard birds hit the engines. “Loud thumps. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail,” he said. “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.” He quickly ruled out turning back to La Guardia Airport or trying to make it to an airport in ...

Daily Mail: Hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger has described for the first time the moment his passenger jet was crippled by a double bird strike over New York. He told investigators how his cockpit windscreen suddenly filled with ‘big, dark brown birds,’ and how, moments later, he smelled ‘burning birds’ as both engines shut down. Data from the flight data recorder showed that both engines lost power simultaneously. Captain Sullenberger told air traffic control his jet was ‘too low, too slow’ and near too many tall buildings to reach an airport. Heading for Teterboro airport in New Jersey would mean risking a 'catastrophic' crash in a populated neighborhood. ‘We can’t do it,’ he said. ‘We’re gonna be in the Hudson.’ ... The Telegraph reported: ... The veteran pilot told crash investigators from the National Transport Safety Board that he heard a "thump" followed by "a smell of burning birds" and then "silence" as both the Airbus A320's engines c...

Washington Post: On Thursday afternoon, Capt. Vince Lombardi was backing his ferry, the Thomas Jefferson , out of Manhattan's Pier 79 in the Hudson River when he noticed a strange-looking boat. No, he realized -- it was a commercial jet. Lombardi quickly moved his crew into high gear for a rescue. "I gave the command to my guys: 'Get the overboard equipment ready. We got to do this fast, or we're not going to have any survivors,' " Lombardi said. No ferry captain expects to encounter a disaster of this magnitude, said Lombardi and a half-dozen other captains who helped all 155 survivors of a US Airways jet that crash-landed in the Hudson River. But they're trained for it. They learn CPR, basic firefighting and hypothermia treatment. ... Their response time is almost always less than two minutes, most often less than a minute and a half, said Vince Lucante, a port captain for New York Waterway, Lombardi's company. On Thursday, Coast Guard vi...

NY Times: ... Ms. Higgins said that the air traffic controllers cleared Flight 1549, with 155 people aboard, for takeoff from LaGuardia at 3:24:54. The first response of distress came at 3:27:32. “Ah, this is Cactus 1549,” came the call from the flight deck. Ms. Higgins said she did not know if the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III or the co-pilot, Jeffrey Skiles, was speaking. “Hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We are turning back towards LaGuardia.” Radar from Kennedy and Newark Airport confirmed that the aircraft had intersected “primary targets” between 2,900 feet and 3,000 feet, Ms. Higgins said, almost certainly birds that were about five miles from LaGuardia Airport. The air traffic controller asked if Flight 1549 wanted to land on Runway 13. “We’re unable, we may end up in the Hudson,” came the response. Dismissing the notion of trying to land at Teterboro Airport, six miles west, in New Jersey, the response from the cockpit was, “We can’t do it.” When asked wh...