16 January 2009

US Airways plane crashes in to NYC's Hudson River

Passengers on board an Airbus 320 survived a crash in to NYC's Hudson River Thursday afternoon.

A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid River after a collision with a flock of birds, apparently knocked out both engines.

Rescuers pulled out all 155 people on board in to boats as the plane sank. There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said that the pilot reported a "double bird strike" about 30 to 45 seconds after takeoff and said he needed to return to LaGuardia. The controller instructed the pilot to divert to an airport in Teterboro, N.J., for an emergency landing, Church said.

The Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan. The plane, an Airbus 320, took off at 3:26 p.m. and went down just minutes later, Brown said.

The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows when rescuers in Coast Guard vessels and ferry boats arrived, opened the door and pulled passengers in yellow life vests from the aircraft, whose fuselage appeared intact. The plane was sinking in the near-freezing water on one of the coldest days of the year, with the mercury around 20 degrees.

Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. "I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it's landing right in the water," said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television newsmagazine "Inside Edition." "This looked like a controlled descent."

US Airways CEO Doug Parker confirmed that 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board the jetliner.

Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said it is not unusual for birds to strike planes. In fact, he said, when planes get ready to take off, if there are birds in the area, the tower will alert the crew. "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," Mazzone said.

Twenty-seven years ago this week, an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River after hitting a bridge just after takeoff from Washington National Airport. The crash on Jan. 13, 1982, killed 78 people including four people in their cars on the bridge. Five people on the plane survived.

On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people. That was the first major crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

Source: AP