Landing on the River

On the afternoon of 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York, bound for Charlotte, North Carolina.

It was a cold, clear winter day. On board were 150 passengers and 5 crew. In the cockpit were Captain Chesley Sullenberger, known as Sully, who had been flying for more than forty years, and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles.

Birds

About two minutes after take-off, as the plane climbed through about 2,800 feet, it flew into a flock of large Canada geese.

Passengers heard loud thuds. Some saw flames coming from the engines. Both engines lost almost all their power.

The plane was now a glider, a 70-tonne glider, over one of the most crowded cities in the world.

Seconds to decide

Captain Sullenberger took over the controls. First Officer Skiles began working through the emergency checklist, trying to restart the engines.

Sullenberger radioed air traffic control. The controller, Patrick Harten, offered him a runway back at LaGuardia, and then another option, Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

The captain quickly judged that they could not reach either of them. If they tried and fell short, they would crash into the streets and buildings of New York.

According to the official transcript, he told the controller: "We're gonna be in the Hudson."

The Hudson River runs along the west side of Manhattan. It is wide and long, with no bridges for miles in that stretch. It was the only open, flat space they could reach.

Brace for impact

Landing a large jet on water, called ditching, is extremely dangerous. If one wing touches the water first, or the nose comes down too steeply, the plane can break apart.

Over the cabin speakers, the captain gave a short instruction to everyone on board: "This is the captain. Brace for impact."

In the cabin, the three flight attendants, Sheila Dail, Doreen Welsh and Donna Dent, began shouting their commands in unison, again and again: brace, brace, heads down, stay down.

Sullenberger brought the plane down over the river, keeping the wings level and the nose slightly up. At about 3:31 in the afternoon, roughly three and a half minutes after the birds hit, Flight 1549 touched down on the Hudson River.

The plane stayed in one piece.

On the wings

Water began pouring into the back of the cabin. The flight attendants opened the exits and directed passengers out. People climbed onto the wings and into the inflatable slides, which became rafts. The water was close to freezing, and the air temperature was well below zero.

Within minutes, boats arrived. The first was a commuter ferry, and more ferries followed, along with police and fire boats. Their crews pulled people out of the water and off the wings. Some passengers stood on the wings in water up to their knees, holding hands.

Before leaving, Captain Sullenberger walked through the sinking cabin, twice, to make sure nobody was left behind.

All 155 people on board survived. There were some serious injuries, including a flight attendant with a deep cut to her leg, but nobody died.

Afterwards

The newspapers called it the Miracle on the Hudson. Sullenberger was celebrated as a hero, but he always said that it was the work of the whole crew, the controllers and the rescuers, and of years of training.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigated carefully, as it does after every accident. Its report concluded that the captain's decision to land on the river had given the passengers the best chance of survival, and that the teamwork in the cockpit, the cabin and on the water had been crucial.

The plane itself was later taken from the river and is now on display in a museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, the city it never reached.

Want to read more?

The NTSB's official report, which is free online, gives a minute-by-minute account of the flight. Captain Sullenberger's memoir, Highest Duty, tells the story from the cockpit and describes the long career that prepared him for those few minutes.