using the word miracle. But this Sully guy, the
My friend, as a pilot, I can tell you that "water landing" is just a euphemism for "crash".
Hitting the water at airline speeds is like hitting reinforced concrete.
Yes, the pilot did a great job.
He followed his training.
That, coupled with his considerable experience, saved lives.
The water temp alone was more than enough to kill everyone aboard.
...this would be a GREAT time, eh?
cg
I always thought passenger jets could glide w/o engines like a rock?
They're not good. Luckily the pilot took his work home with him and flew gliders as well... if anybody could stretch a poor glide into a safe landing, that's who you'd want.
What about the passenger who had to be dragged out as they wouldn't go without their luggage, though?
I wonder what was in that luggage? Diamonds? Drugs? A Bomb? Ooooweeeooooooo
...I saw a report by an "expert" last nite; he stated that that particular aircraft had a "one to twenty" glide ratio...that's for every thousand feet of altitude lost, you gain 20,000 (4 miles) on the ground. The caveat unsaid is "...if you have airspeed."
But, still, that's pretty dang good.
cg
Ahhh. Shades of the Gimli Glider. Not that it applies in this case, but who do you want on the flight deck, a skilled and experienced glider pilot? or someone who intuitively knows that mass/volume is specific gravity, and that
1.6 is not in the ballpark for JP1?
It would suck to be transporting Mom's remains or something like that. I don't really want to make a joke of that person's loss, not knowing what he lost.
lace trimmed skivvies?
The 'glide' converts descent into airspeed.i.e.... the energy from the drop turns into forward motion.
From what I read, he's already doing the training and lecturing for airlines.
The 747 has a glide ratio of about 17:1. That compares well with gliders that can be 60:1 or the space shuttle on approach that is 4.5:1. The shuttle is the worlds biggest and heaviest glider.
They raised the age to 65. "
That's true enough - but really it's all about priorities. And the odds are if you linger inside the plane you're either going to drown there, and even if you don't then the chances of ending up in the water when you get out are pretty high too.
Apparently there has been an experiment over here (UK) where they wanted to inject some realism into the evacuation time tests they do - instead of just letting the non-paniced student volunteers leave the plane in an orderly fashion and get out in double quick time, they offered a decent prize to the first thirty people to get out.
That was much more like a real life evacuation - fighting, climbing over each other etc. etc. Took a lot longer too.
Not a good place to be.
Well, if you had to be in a plane crash, this one was the place to be. You had an almost impossibly skilled and calm pilot, a co-pilot with
24 years experience, and excellent flight crew, passengers who in general were sensible and well behaved, and local (canyou REALLY call NYC local?) rescue boats that evidently were teleported to the scene. I know of one other water landing off a NYC airport, and it might have been from Idewild, maybe 40-45 years ago. Everyone died. This time, no one died. A much to be preferred result. Congratulations to all the professionals involved, and many of the volunteers.
Well, if you had to be in a plane crash, this one was the place to be. You had an almost impossibly skilled and calm pilot, a co-pilot with
24 years experience, and excellent flight crew, passengers who in general were sensible and well behaved, and local (canyou REALLY call NYC local?) rescue boats that evidently were teleported to the scene. I know of one other water landing off a NYC airport, and it might have been from Idewild, maybe 40-45 years ago. Everyone died. This time, no one died. A much to be preferred result. Congratulations to all the professionals involved, and many of the volunteers.The pilot and his family are a total american dream. Almost every cliche and sterotype applys. He is being called a publicist's dream. I wonder how many movies, good and bad will be made of this incident.
So far, Sully seems to take it all in stride. In fact, that is what I admire most about this guy..." just doing my job." I'm not saying that won't change down the road, because he does have a young family, so offers of big bucks would be hard to turn down... and he bloody well deserves a nice big gratuity. It is also unlikely he'll chose JoeThePlumber's agent.
It sounded as if they were originally going to go for Teterboro, which literally has 50 feet of grass at the end of each runway before the heavy population starts. Coming up short would have guaranteed many, many dead. Coming up short at LGA meant the river. What a landing!
I'll echo... Way to go, Sully!
On another note... This was a typical NYC disaster response! Within minutes, every ferry boat, water taxi, etc... in the area was on the scene. The northeastern version of "bubba in a bass boat."
That's partially true.
Every airplane as a "best glide speed", on big ones it's weight dependent. More airspeed actually equals less glide, if it's above the magic number. While it sounds counter-intuitive, too fast will reduce glide distance just as too slow will.
The key is to establish the correct airspeed ASAP.
Aeronautically, it's weight dependent on ALL airplanes. More importantly, though, it's really dependent on a combination of factors which also include lift & drag. Thus, with thrust factored in, you have the four forces acting on an airplane.
Yep.
One of the things that's always, um, amused me is people thinking an airplane stops flying when the power is lost/cut. The other is people thinking that an airplane "stalling" means the engine quit. If only they'd cover those basics when reporting airplane incidents. Of course the "talent" would have to understand it, so I guess I'll have to keep dreaming.
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