From: Joseph McAllister
On Jan 16, 2009, at 11:43 , John Francis wrote:
> That's pretty much the slant on the news stories out here, too.
> Of course the fact that he's a bay area local with a long history
> of service (including teaching emergency safety techniques) helps.
From listening to all the expert talking heads on the tube today, it
looks like what this Captain had was instinct to know he could not
make it to any airport safely, and the ability and presence of mind to
treat this as a normal but wheels up landing. That's what "the book"
calls for. The crew stayed calm which kept the passengers reasonably
calm.
I didn't listen to many of the "expert talking heads", but I did catch
one MSNBC interview. The anchor called his brother who is an airline
pilot to get a perspective on the ditching while they were still pulling
people off the wing.
The brother said all airline pilots train on ditching scenarios in the
simulator, but all the scenarios start with the assumption you're at
altitude when you begin the process. He said there's a long checklist
the flight crew goes through during the descent to prepare the aircraft
for the water landing.
But the brother said there ain't no checklist for 45 seconds into the
flight you're all of a sudden without power over one of the largest,
densest urban areas in the world and gotta find somewhere to put it down
NOW, and finding a way to do it without killing either the passengers or
anyone on the ground.
And you can tell he had his shit together, 'cause he already had Plan D
(ditch in the Hudson) workin' even BEFORE Plan B (return to LaGuardia)
and Plan C (divert to Teterborough) proved to be out the window.
There ain't no book for what this guy did.
Also have to hand it to the pilots of all those boats for doing the
right thing getting the folks on board and inside where it's warm and
sheltered ASAP.
There will be hundreds of stories to come out of this in the next few
months. I look forward to the minutia that is a part of all this. I
did the photography of more than one crash while in the Navy and
became interested in the science of accident investigation.
Best to all involved...
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