US Airways flight 1549 goes down in Hudson Rive

[Guest rattler]

Never realized how often bird strikes happen and are reported. If you want to get a feel for the extent of the problem just goto www.avherald.com and in the search window enter "bird". Remember I said reported and the search only goes back to Sept 2008. (my search showed 57 reported bird strikes from Sept 2008 to Jan 21 2009). And those are only for commercial operations.

[DEFCON]

The keyword is "reported".

[Kip Powick]

[mo32a]

The keyword is "reported".

Most reports are pretty meaningless.

Typical report would be;

Abc123 reported birdstrike on departure rwy 08R at 0215z.

Nothing found.

The only reports that generated any interest were instances where remains of the offender were found and it was of a large size, i.e. goose, eagle, heron etc. or where the a/c returned due to damage, or reported damage.

[newgirl]

My area of the country is known for bird strikes especially in the fall.

I've seen blood and guts on the windshield and wondered how they managed to land. I've seen the gore left on the nose wheel and also the dent on the shaft (?). I've seen a dent the size of a football in the nose of the aircraft.

But the worst was the damage to the engine blades on a A320. They were twisted like a twist tie.

Does anyone have the statistics on bird strikes taking out both engines?

Kudos to the Captain, First Officer and flight crew.

One more naive question , why in instances like this does the majority of credit go to the Captain? Does the F/O not have any input? I thought they worked as a team. My thinking is that that the Gimli Glider may have had a different ending if not for the Captain being a glider pilot and the F/O knowing that Gimli had an air strip that could be used.

So if we have the Gimli Glider will this be called the Hudson Honker?

[Kip Powick]

One more naive question , why in instances like this does the majority of credit go to the Captain? Does the F/O not have any input? I thought they worked as a team.

I think you find many posts here, and on other forums where that point has been made. Took a long while for the FA's to be publically acknowledged as well.

[conehead]

I see the Flight Attendants were all senior citizens.

[Guest]

I see the Flight Attendants were all senior citizens.

Have you looked in the mirror lately Scotty

[conehead]

Oh....... yeah.

[conehead]

Fleet modification...

[newgirl]

Conehead

Trust me when thimgs go south I'd rather have the senior citizen flight attendants direct me out of the aircraft. Give me an old girl anytime compared to a new girl with 6 months under her belt.

[Southshore]

The skipper hasn't missed an opportunity to credit the entire crew for the positive outcome but America wants a "hero" and, dammit, they gonna have their hero. The media won't be told what they don't wanna hear. Aviation news sources have the right story but that won't make it to the New York Post et al.

Good job by all, water and air.

[DEFCON]

It's been a little while now, but doesn't the pax seatback safety card suggest the ac will float tail low and if so, aren't the F/A's supposed to look out and "evaluate" prior to pulling the handle?

If that’s the case, why did one of the F/A's attempt to open the rear door(s) under the circumstances?

My questions above are not intended to be insulting to anyone.

[sustainable]

Evidently it was a passenger that attempted to open the rear door.

[DEFCON]

Interesting.

On the "news", a pax at the back and other than Sully, the last man out, described the tribulation the FA experienced in trying to open the door. He claimed; all she could do was get the door to "crack" and that it wouldn't open further? He also commented on the amount of water that came rushing in through the "crack"?

[Don Hudson]

Read to the end:

Andrew Sawers

Editor's letter: Fear of flying

Financial Director, 26 Jan 2009

Yet another ordinary day and, so far, the third perfectly ordinary takeoff of the day for the crew on board US Airways flight 1549.

Suddenly, around 90 seconds into the flight and at some 3,000 feet above the Bronx, the first officer spots a flock of large brown birds. He thinks they’re going to miss them, but it’s too late to do anything about it anyway. Captain Chesley Sullenberger’s initial reaction is to duck – not as silly as it sounds, since a goose can cause a lot of damage when it’s hit by an aircraft windscreen at a couple of hundred miles per hour. A number of geese fall victim to the engines on the Airbus A320. Both engines immediately fall victim to the geese.

While the pilots assess whether there is any power left, option A, an immediate return to New York’s La Guardia, is instantly ruled out. Teterboro airport in New Jersey looks like a good plan B, but only for a few seconds. “Too low and too slow,” Captain Sullenberger believes it’s out of reach. “We’re going into the Hudson,” the captain tells air traffic control.

You train for this day. You train and you train and you train – but not only do you never really believe you will have to put this training into practice, you probably never will. But if you have to, you can.

Pilots learn how to deal with a huge range of potential disasters and practise the correct response procedures over and over in incredibly realistic simulators. When it comes to risk, they are the ones with the front row seat. Moreover, the most experienced pilots, I’m told, almost always have an alternative plan in mind: if we lost all engines now, where would we put down?

When the crisis arises, the captain doesn’t get paid to be the best pilot on the plane. That honour could just as easily belong to the first officer (who is invariably lost in the media shadow of the captain when it’s all over, but many of our readers will know that feeling). The captain is paid to make decisions. La Guardia: not possible. Teterboro: too risky. The Hudson: flying south, with a tail wind (not good) but nearer to the commuter ferries than landing north bound.

Nor is the captain necessarily paid to make the absolutely best decision. Several days after the accident, some pilots on an aviation industry website calculated that the flight could have made it to Teterboro. But Sullenberger didn’t have the luxury of time that those on the ground had to perform the mathematical calculations. In any event, he almost certainly realised that too much could have gone wrong while flying a damaged Airbus over heavily-populated terrain.

He’s paid to know what decisions have to be made, to make them and to execute them superbly. And he needs a well-trained team – in the cockpit and the cabin – to make it happen.

Something in all of this made me think of the banking crisis. If you needed a pilot’s licence to lend money, most bankers wouldn’t make it to ‘Plane Spotter, first class’. If bankers had a pilot’s training in risk and what to do when it makes all your dials go red, then the heat would have been taken out of the financial system long before banks started falling out of the sky. Bankers fly into thunderstorms because that’s where the fun and excitement is, and it just adds to delay and cost to fly around them; besides, it’s not their plane, and they have a parachute. A golden one. Pilots avoid thunderstorms like cats avoid water.

It’s also striking how ill-suited our elected representatives are at times like this. It’s as if a Boeing declared an emergency and called upon the transport minister to deal with it. Now our bankers have crashed, the minister couldn’t help them, they’ve left the wreckage and the casualties all over the entire economy and they’ve given themselves such a dreadful fright they don’t want to fly any more. They don’t want to pilot the plane and they certainly don’t want to fly as a passenger in anyone else’s plane. They know how ill-equipped all the other bank-pilots are.

Some day the planes will be flying again. When they do, there’s an old saying in the aviation industry that’s worth bearing in mind: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” When we can start saying the same thing about bankers, we’ll be getting somewhere.

[Seeker]

Don;

Very good!

I think the main difference is that pilots have a vested interest in seeing a positive outcome since they are along for the ride. Maybe if executives had to post a bond against certain performance objectives you'd see similar decision making attitudes. Wishful thinking.

[Don Hudson]

A number of apropos comments have been made on various sites discussing this accident regarding pilot salaries, the disappearing pensions, the nickel-and-dime-penny-wise-pound-foolishness that accountants and other deskfolk sometimes bring to aviation but the best was from a good friend:

Regarding 1549 I saw this quote elsewhere in response to the suggestion that the pilots get a raise:

" The ability to ditch an airplane in the Hudson does not qualify a pilot for a pay raise. The ability to get the pilots, with this ability, to work for 30% or 40% pay cuts qualifies those in management for millions in bonuses. This is how our system works."

[Kip Powick]

Have another email with 35 or so slides of the aircraft in the water and closeups of the boats etc...quite entertaining and a good presentation with the exception of the fact that the fellow who made it had an A330 taking off for one of his initial slides

Wanna copy?????????????/ kidi@sympatico.ca

Anonimity respected.

[Lakelad]

American Airlines to limit passengers on some jets to match capacity of life rafts

Wednesday January 28, 2009, - Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) -- American Airlines is limiting the number of passengers on some planes while it orders additional life rafts needed in case of a water landing like the one made this month on the Hudson River by a US Airways jet.

American will allow no more than 228 people including passengers and crew on its Boeing 767-300 aircraft, which normally holds 236 people including a crew of 11, spokesman Tim Wagner said Wednesday.

The planes are mostly used on flights over the Atlantic to Europe, and to Latin America.

American is taking the step to make sure it complies with Federal Aviation Administration rules on raft capacity, Wagner said.

The spokesman said the problem arose after American added additional seats when redesigning the business-class cabins of the 767s between 2005 and 2007. The airline discovered the shortage this week when it reviewed life raft capacity on new Boeing 737 aircraft and then decided to re-examine the situation on other planes in its fleet.

"Given the time of year and what's going on in the economy, I'm not aware of any flights where we're going to have to bump someone,"

[Guest rattler]

So AA was operating in violation of FAA rules and decided to turn themselves in rather than have the FAA notice and fine them (I guess). Absolutely nothing to do with the Hudson affair. I wonder if the FAA will fine them anyway???

Regarding the number of rafts, isn't the norm for the regulation to base that on the available seating rather than the actual number of passenger on any one flight?

[DEFCON]

Didn't Jazz recently remove the life vests from their ac in the interest of cost control?

[Guest rattler]

Didn't Jazz recently remove the life vests from their ac in the interest of cost control?

And in full accordance with the regulations........

[DEFCON]

Ah yes...those well thought out regulations.

[boestar]

and you will notice that not one of the people on that flight took the jacket from under their seat and only a couple took the seat cushion. The odds of a Jazz flight making an emergency landing in water is very very slim.