Fantastic 3D animation/reconstruction of US1549 ditching in Hudson

[Pittbug]

http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/pr...dson_river.html

[Seth]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing that. I have an absolute fascination with that flight and am forever amazed at the skill at which the crew and the rescue exhibited.

Grace under pressure.

[Chris Keen]

That is just so very cool, how calm he was. Like he knew they would be fine ditchin it in the river.

[Pittbug]

It seems pilots have this constant competition among themselves to see how cool they can sound across the radios and he definitely sounded cool under pressure. I can't imagine landing a jetliner in a river is something they have to do to get their wings.

[Hank Ellis]

It seems pilots have this constant competition among themselves to see how cool they can sound across the radios and he definitely sounded cool under pressure.

There's still a story that floats around the Gulf that goes back to the Wild West days of offshore helicopter service. Back then the reliability of helicopters was less than what I would call desireable. Engine failures were fairly common. Here and there even structural failures. We've come a long way.

The story goes that Peter Pilot was bopping along when he had some generic engine failure. Getting on the radio he announces, "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY ENGINE FAILURE GOING DOWN AT ......" The guy wouldn't shut up giving every little detail of securing the engine and setting up for the autorotation. Somebody had enough of it and keyed the mic. "Would you please shut the f*** up and die like a man." Nobody is harder on a pilot than another pilot.

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That forced landing of US1549 is probably one of the best examples of heavy iron airmanship ever exibited. I noted in the tape as the PIC was abeam of TEB that he briefly considered landing there. Quickly figured out that he may not make it. Went for the sure thing in the Hudson.

What struck me was that the PIC never broke the golden rule of aviating. Keep flying the aircraft. Aircraft fly by the Bernoulli principle, not Marconi. He only got on the radio when he absolutely had to in between commands for APU starts, inflight restarts, flap settings, etc. The aviation community is going to be studying this for decades.

FYI: Just got back from my annual recurrent training. Got a couple hours in the sim doing nothing but engine starts in 206L-series and 407. Instructor threw the book at me. High side governor failures, fuel control failures, explosive starts, hung starts, FADEC failures. Probably burned up a half million simulated dollars of engines in those two hours. I was a beat puppy when I crawled out.

[Flexmoney]

Thanks for posting, Pitt!