Two years ago today, a US Airways flight splash-crashed into the icy Hudson River. Amazing, no one died and all 155 passengers and crew members escaped the sinking plane, thanks to many boats in the river, like the NY Waterway ferries. It turned out that the plane suffered a bird strike, disabling engines, and pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger decided instead of returning Flight 1549 back to LaGuardia Airport that he would land the plane in the water. At the time, then Governor David Paterson said, "We had a Miracle on 34th Street, now, I believe, we have a Miracle on the Hudson."
Sullenberger, who along with his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles and flight attendants Donna Dent, Doreen Welsh, and Sheila Dail were given keys to the city, recently told the AP that he's "come to appreciate the enormity of what happened that day and what didn't happen that day." Last year, the NTSB announced that Sullenberger could have gone back, but he did do a good job anyway.
Flight 1549 also forced the FDNY to upgrade its Marine Unit and to revamp how it deals with water emergencies. The Times reports, "In re-engineering its approach to the city’s waterways and more than 400 miles of shoreline, the department is adding large and small vessels to its fleet of fireboats in New York Harbor, and employing new technology that can turn a boat into a floating command and control center to assess, or to direct the response to, potential waterborne challenges, like rescues or terrorism attacks."
Two of the plane's passengers went from being simply co-workers headed back home to Charlotte on that fateful flight to being "best friends in three minutes," Darren Beck said of himself and Don Norton. Norton told the Dallas Morning News, "I'll never be the same on a plane," and Beck's son apparently ask him, "What if the geese come?" before he boards a flight.
As for the geese, well, the city has been trying to "cull" them to avoid another bird strike disaster.
