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Master of Ossus wrote:DO they have life vests on passenger aircraft? I thought they just had seat-cushions designed to float.

Mayabird wrote:The safety videos at the beginning of the flight (am I the only person who pays attention to those things?)

Mayabird wrote:Sometimes they also have inflatable life rafts at the emergency exists but I don't know which ones specifically carry them.

Mayabird wrote:The life vests are (usually) under the seats, attached to the bottom. The safety videos at the beginning of the flight (am I the only person who pays attention to those things?) always show how to put them on and inflate them, and there are also the cards in the seat backs with pictures of it all. Sometimes they also have inflatable life rafts at the emergency exists but I don't know which ones specifically carry them.

Count Chocula wrote:Talk show host here in Tampa (Schnitt Show) had a retired US Air pilot on who was familiar with the Airbus. According to him, 1) the engine pylons are designed so that the engines will separate from the wings in a water landing, and 2) this is the first successful water landing of a transport EVER!!

That pilot did a truly fantastic job.

Broomstick wrote:Supposedly, after the last passenger was out he walked the cabin TWICE in waist-deep water to make sure that no one had been left behind. One wonders how he managed to walk that narrow aisle with such enormous brass balls.

January 16, 2009

US Airways Crew Is Credited for Quick Reaction
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Minutes after departing La Guardia Airport, what the crew of US Airways Flight 1549 faced Thursday afternoon, at about 3,000 feet over the central Bronx, was a really quick decision.

The plane had suffered “a double bird strike,” one of the pilots told an air traffic controller at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control.

Probably feeling the plane shake after hitting the birds, and certainly feeling the loss of power in both engines and watching the dials show thrust slipping away, the crew looked ahead as the plane turned west, and caught a glimpse of a runway.

What is that small airport, one pilot asked a controller.

Teterboro, in New Jersey, the controller replied, and instructed the pilot to fly south along the Hudson River, then swing back to the north to land there.

Instead, the pilot told the controller that they would ditch the plane in the river. They then cleared the George Washington Bridge by about 900 feet, according to controllers, and at a point near the end of West 48th Street in Midtown Manhattan, the plane slid into the river’s smooth, gray waters.

In a few weeks, a close comparison of radar tapes and cockpit audiotapes will establish where the plane was when that clipped, urgent conversation took place, and other investigators will try to figure out why this one plane, flying through some of the world’s most congested airspace, was the only one to report a bird problem.

But from early indications, it appears the pilot handled the emergency river landing with aplomb and avoided major injuries, evacuating the plane, an Airbus A320, calmly in the middle of the river, passengers and officials said.

Airliners are not meant to glide, although occasionally they have to. The pilot of this one, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, is certified as a glider pilot, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

Captain Sullenberger, known as Sully, flew the F-4 for the United States Air Force for seven years in the 1970s after graduating from the United States Air Force Academy. He joined USAir, as it was called at the time, in 1980 and became a “check airman,” training and evaluating new pilots or those changing to new aircraft or moving up to captain. He also was an accident investigator for the union, the Air Line Pilots Association.

Captain Sullenberger’s wife, Lorrie Sullenberger, a fitness expert in Danville, Calif., said she learned about the crash on Thursday afternoon when her husband called her. “I haven’t stopped shaking yet,” she said in a brief phone interview.

US Airways pilots can drill for water landings in a simulator, but no one knows how realistic that is. “You’re landing on a big blue screen,” said one US Airways A320 pilot, referring to the flat-panel computer screens in the simulator.

“Better to land at an airport where there’s actual crash-fire-rescue,” said the pilot, who requested anonymity because he did not have his airline’s permission to speak. But the pilot and other experts said the crew appeared to have done a good job.

Ditching can be tricky. The first step is to extend the slats and the flaps, the movable surfaces on the front and back edges of the wings that allow the plane to fly more slowly and to descend to just over the water’s surface.

Another step is to hit the “ditching button,” which seals the openings in the plane. One is the intake, where the engines grab air to pressurize and force it into the cabin, essential to high-altitude flight. Another is the valve at the back that lets air out.

When the plane is flying low enough, it will generate its own cushion of air, a phenomenon called “ground effect,” that lets it fly even more slowly.

“The whole point is to get the airplane slow, to minimize the damage and the forces on the airplane,” said John Cox, a safety consultant who flew the A320 for US Airways and USAir for six years.

Mr. Cox said that he knew Captain Sullenberger and that he was “a seriously good aviator.”

While the plane slows, the crew has to be careful not to let it stall, which happens when the wind is flowing over the wings too slowly to generate enough lift and the plane falls from the sky. Mr. Cox said the plane would probably have touched down at 100 to 120 knots, roughly 115 to 140 miles per hour.

Ditching is different from landing a glider. Another safety expert, Arnie Reiner, who was a crash investigator for Pan American World Airways and later a pilot for the Delta Shuttle flights out of La Guardia, said the object was to keep the wings level and the nose up slightly, so the fuselage could plane on the water’s surface. Hit in a nose-down attitude, he said, and the plane could dig into the water, potentially damaging the fuselage heavily.

This one settled in with the nose high.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:

Mayabird wrote:The life vests are (usually) under the seats, attached to the bottom. The safety videos at the beginning of the flight (am I the only person who pays attention to those things?) always show how to put them on and inflate them, and there are also the cards in the seat backs with pictures of it all. Sometimes they also have inflatable life rafts at the emergency exists but I don't know which ones specifically carry them.

The evacuation slides are intended to double as life rafts, IIRC, which means they all would.


In fact, I think in the picture at the front of this thread you can see people lined up on long, gray, narrow floating objects on each side of the aircraft, which are presumably the slides in use as life rafts.

Mayabird wrote: But not all planes have evacuation slides. IIRC some of the smaller ones I've been in have the emergency exits over the wings and the instructions are to slide off the wings themselves, which actually isn't all that far. But this is a big plane we're talking about here and I had been wondering if those were rafts.

Airliners are not meant to glide, although occasionally they have to. The pilot of this one, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, is certified as a glider pilot, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:

Airliners are not meant to glide, although occasionally they have to. The pilot of this one, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, is certified as a glider pilot, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

Does this mean he knows how to fly one-man gliders, or does 'glider pilot' mean something specific in commercial aviation lingo?

Airliners are not meant to glide, but they actually do glide pretty well, much better than the small airplanes I fly and, in fact, the average airliner glides better than the one actual glider I flew - admittedly, it wasn't a spectacular type of glider, that one. Some of the features that optimize them for high-altitude flight made for decent glide characteristics at lower altitudes.

Broomstick wrote:[Generalizing] Airliners have auxiliary power generators that drop into the airstream and use it to power things like basic instruments, hydraulics, and landing gear in the event of large scale power failures. The fact that this is standard equipment tells you that there is an expectation the airplane will be flyable even if the engines aren't running at all. [/generalizing]

Redleader34 wrote:This is the Hudson river, which tends to be freezing (It wasn't,) and the fact that people did not die or worse, crash into an office tower/Jersey/South Bronx makes it pretty miraculous, when the last few damaged airplanes in this city (Not counting 9-11) tended to crash and kill everyone involved. Flight 587 killed everyone on it AND several on the ground, and Cory Lide's plane killed himself, his pilot, and injured 23 others.

FSTargetDrone wrote:
With regard to the over-used "miracle" nonsense, if you hear anyone say that, just ask where the "miracle" was for people in airplane accidents which did not turn out so well. Or any disaster, really.