How to land your plane in the Hudson River

[Stubblecat]

Okay, there wasn't a thread about this yet, so here it is.

I'm compelled to comment on this because of what I do for a living. You see, I work at an airport. I head up a crew of Airfield Maintenance Specialists who are responsible for all ground-based activities at my airport. Some of my guys (myself included) are also contracted out to cover ARFF fire & rescue service for Northwest Airlines. We also cover any other fire or medical emergencies on the field.

I was floored when I heard this story yesterday for one BIG reason. The pilot landed the plane on water.

For those of you who aren't overly familiar with aviation, I'll simplfy it: Water is actually harder than land. A plane skidding into the ground has a reasonable chance of stopping safely. A plane skidding into water gets torn apart into tiny bits approximately 100% of the time. Any survivors of the impact usually drown. That percentage increases as the size of the aircraft increases. A 2-seater Cessna 150 might only crumple up and sink, while a Boeing 737 will turn into confetti.

So this Airbus 320 glides into the Hudson River and the passengers get out and wait for rescue on the wings?

This simply does not happen. Ever. If you're wondering why so much praise is being dumped on the pilot, it's only because this was literally a one-in-a-million landing. Any other time, one of the wings would have sheared off and about a third of the passengers would have drowned.

Okay... Sorry to rant on about this. It was all we could talk about at work.

[Paul Kile]

This simply does not happen. Ever. If you're wondering why so much praise is being dumped on the pilot, it's only because this was literally a one-in-a-million landing. Any other time, one of the wings would have sheared off and about a third of the passengers would have drowned.

Okay... Sorry to rant on about this. It was all we could talk about at work.

I respectfully disagree - there have been many cases of sucessful ditchings (or should I use the more politically correct term of "water landings"). One of the most famous was the 1956 ditching of the Pan Am Stratocruiser "Sovereign of the Skies" in the Pacific Ocean after 2 engines failed. Captain Richard Ogg landed his aircraft and all 24 people aboard got out safely. The Stratocruiser was the biggest production propliner ever built, and it managed to come to rest with little structural damage (the tail broke off, but the crew expected this to happen and passengers were moved forward prior to the ditching). The airplane floated for almost 20 minutes, which was unusual as well, giving the crew lots of time to get the passengers out.

Then there is the case of the Japan Air Lines DC-8 that landed short coming into San Francisco - right into the bay! The landing gear was down, and the crew misread their glide slope - the plane landed and came to rest in 8 feet of water, with the landing gear sitting on the floor of the bay. The water came up to just below the level of the cabin doors, so it was a simple matter to evacuate the passengers. The plane was later salvaged and rebuilt at the United Airlines maintenance base in SFO, went back into airline service!

I will grant that water landings are still a very chancy proposition, but many are survivable. The pilot of the A320 had a lot going for him - relatively slow speed, level attitude, calm water, proximity of lots of rescue boats, and the fact that the engines broke off upon contact with the water (jet pods are designed to do this so as to not act as water "scoops" and flip the plane over). The captain is still a hero in my book!