Hi Jim
Not miraculous, but extremely well executed, in my view.
The chap had little time to make a decision, but in the space of a
couple of minutes he had to:
1. Lower the nose pretty smartly to avoid stalling the aircraft; he
would have had it pretty high in a steep climb for noise abatement
procedures in a city area.
2. Guess at a good gliding speed, although a good, experienced and
conscientious pilot would have known the minimum drag speed for that
weight.
3. Tell ATC that a large aircraft was over a large and populous city
with no way of remaining airborne for long (then ignore them for a
while as they had nothing useful to offer him).
4. Indicate to the crew and passengers that they had better prepare
for a hard landing.
5. Make a plan with very little in the way of resources (runways,
guidance, wind direction) that are normally available to the cosseted
airline pilot (:-)).
6. Tell ATC what that plan was and carry out the emergency shutdown
drills for the engines -- and and the emergency landing drills.
7. Find a clear bit of space, probably his easiest decision as the
river was right in front of him -- once he had the nose down to glide.
8. Decide on the approach angle, when to flare (no practice is
available for either gliding or ditching) and order an evacuation.
9. Finally, to walk down the watery aisle checking that he was the
last one there.
Wonderful! But so was the prompt and professional reaction of the
ferry captains.
The whole thing was excellent and I felt proud of all involved.
Chris
On 6 Feb 2009, at 21:50, Timpe, Jim wrote:
>
> Hey, Chris (Barker); Haven't heard your take on the Hudson splash
> down
> of a couple weeks ago. I've heard pilots express opinions all over
> the
> map, from "any seasoned, skilled pilot could have done that" to
> "nothing
> short of miraculous". I guess my thought is that if it were really as
> easy as the first group would have us believe, there would be far more
> successful water landings on record. As I understand it, the number
> is
> quite miniscule.
--
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