NEW YORK — The pilot of a crippled US Airways jetliner made a split-second decision to put down in the Hudson River because trying to return to the airport after birds knocked out both engines could have led to a “catastrophic” crash in a populated neighborhood, he told investigators Saturday.
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger said that in the few minutes he had to decide where to set down the powerless plane Thursday afternoon, he felt it was “too low, too slow” and near too many buildings to go anywhere else, according to the National Transportation Safety Board account of his testimony.
The pilot and his first officer provided their first account to NTSB investigators Saturday of what unfolded inside the cockpit of the Airbus A320, which late Saturday was hoisted from the water and onto a waiting barge.
Co-pilot Jeff Skiles, who was flying US Airways Flight 1549, saw the birds coming in perfect formation, and made note of it. Sullenberger looked up, and in an instant his windscreen was filled with big, dark-brown birds.
“His instinct was to duck,” said NTSB board member Kitty Higgins. Then there was a thump, the smell of burning birds, and silence as both aircraft engines cut out.
The account illustrated how quickly things deteriorated after the bump at 3,000 feet, and the pilots’ swift realization that returning to LaGuardia or getting to another airport was impossible.
With both engines out, Higgins said, flight attendants described complete silence in the cabin, “like being in a library.” A smoky haze and the odor of burning metal or electronics filled the plane.
The NTSB said radar data confirmed that the aircraft intersected a group of “primary targets,” almost certainly birds, as the jet climbed over the Bronx. Those targets had not been on the radar screen of the air traffic controller who approved the departure, Higgins said.
After the bird impact, Sullenberger said he immediately took over flying from his co-pilot and made a series of command decisions.
Returning to LaGuardia, he quickly realized, was out. So was nearby Teterboro Airport, where he had never flown before, and which would require him to take the jet over densely populated northern New Jersey.
“We can’t do it,” he told air traffic controllers. “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.”
The co-pilot kept trying to restart the engines, while checking off emergency landing procedures on a three-page list that the crew normally begins at 35,000 feet.
Sullenberger guided the gliding jet over the George Washington Bridge and looked for a place to land.
Pilots are trained to set down near a ship if they have to ditch, so they can be rescued before sinking, and Sullenberger picked a stretch of water near Manhattan’s commuter ferry terminals. Rescuers were able to arrive within minutes.
It all happened so fast, the crew never threw the aircraft’s “ditch switch,” which seals off vents and holes in the fuselage to make it more seaworthy.
After the hard landing, the crew’s third flight attendant — the only one in the rear of the aircraft — made the decision not to open the back exits, she told NTSB investigators Saturday, the day she was released from the hospital.
Before she could get the rearmost passengers headed for the front of the plane, one woman managed to open one of the doors a crack, letting water into the cabin.
As the details of the river landing emerged Saturday, investigators in the late evening hoisted the airliner from the river onto a barge, exposing its shredded and torn underside. Parts of the battle-scarred plane appeared sheared off.
Much of the top half of the aircraft appeared as though it might be ready for takeoff — a stark contrast with the charred-looking right wing, and the destroyed right engine, which appeared as though the outside had been peeled off.
The NTSB said sonar teams may have found the sunken left engine of the plane. Preliminary radar reports identified an object directly below the crash site.
“Brace! Brace! Head down!” the flight attendants shouted to the passengers. Then, they were in the water. Two flight attendants likened it to a hard landing — nothing more. There was one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration.
“Neither one of them realized that they were in the water,” Higgins said.
The plane came to a stop. The captain gave a one-word command, “Evacuate.”
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