Posted on 02/08/2009 6:36:55 PM PST by BAW
After US Airways Flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York last month, flight attendant Doreen Welsh, stationed in the back of the A320 jetliner, tried to close an emergency exit opened by a passenger, allowing water to rush in.
According to an interview aired Sunday on CBS News's "60 Minutes," Ms. Welsh said after a passenger "came back and pushed me back and opened the door," garbage cans and coffee pots "were floating" and "things were flying. It was crazy back there."
But the veteran attendant at US Airways Group Inc. said she "started yelling...and pushing people and getting people to go over the seats" toward the front exits. Ms. Welsh, 58 years old, has been flying with the airline for 38 years. "As I was getting up, I thought I might actually live," she said. Ms. Welsh was seriously injured with a leg gash.
The plane, which collided with a flock of birds just after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport on Jan. 15, lost power in both engines. Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, 58, a 29-year veteran of the airline, thought about returning to LaGuardia or landing at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport.
But, according to the 60 Minutes interview and air-traffic-control radio transmissions released last week, the pilot quickly determined that "the only viable alternative, the only level, smooth place sufficiently large to land an airliner was the river." So he turned the powerless plane, carrying 150 passengers and five crew members, and glided south to line up with the Hudson.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
When solid training and nerves of steel kick in.
Yepper
I don’t understand how the pilot can have control of anything if there’s no engines. No engines means no hydraulics. No hydralics means there’s no controls period.
Correct?
So the pilot didn’t fly anything. The plane just went down the way it chose to, no thanks to the pilot.
What am I missing?
And the Hand of God for those of faith.
that too
Wowzers!!!! Sully you are the MAN!!!
That Manly Man Sully has to have discourse with the epitome of lightweightedness in the form of Katie Couric is nauseating.
I think you’re celebrating!
A good deal, but there is not enough time right now
I’m as ignorant as you, but I think there are generators to run the hydraulics that are independent of the engines.
“No engines means no hydraulics”
I totally dispute this assertion. Of course there are hydraulics, no design would be foolish enough to make that all dependent on engine systems.
A commercial airplane has inherent lift, even without engine power. It also has electrical power, supplied by batteries. The control surfaces of the plane are still operable, allowing the pilot to control them, so that in this case, the pilot could turn and bank, operating the flaps and rudders to allow for a maneuver into the river. They practice this in simulation but hope of course never to have to do it in reality, due to the extreme degree of difficulty in execution.
APU aka a battery. Enough to get ya down but it runs out eventually.
You still have hydraulics an flight controls (either from an APU or stored pressurized fluid) ,,, you can set the attitude for best glide and go through your checklists while you look for someplace to land .. in this city sprawl the only place was a waterway. The key seems to be getting the right speed vs. attitude so as to land a bit less firmly.
This pilot also owns a flight safety company and apparently did some extra things not in the checklists that kept the plane afloat.
Steering and quite a number of functions are controlled separately from the engine. The chances of a 100% survival rate without a skilled glider pilot at the helm is somewhere between slim and none.
The mechanical energy of the two engines is the primary source of routine electrical power and hydraulic pressure for the aircraft flight control systems.[28] The aircraft also has an auxiliary power unit (APU), which can provide backup electrical power for the aircraft, including its electrically powered hydraulic pumps; and a ram air turbine (RAT), a type of wind turbine that can be deployed into the airstream to provide backup hydraulic pressure and electrical power at certain speeds.[28] According to the NTSB, both the APU and the RAT were operating as the plane descended into the Hudson, although it was not clear whether the RAT had been deployed manually or automatically.[28]
Do you think the aircraft turned itself, and self-flared right above the water? Of course the pilot was controlling the aircraft. Maybe those engines were still turning enough to power the hydraulics? Maybe an APU?
Correct?
I am not a pilot, but from what I understand, these are fly by wire planes that work on servo motors and electricity. In addition I have heard some planes are equipped with a system that allows it to generate some energy from the flow of air over a turbine like device.
“I don’t understand how the pilot can have control of anything if there’s no engines. No engines means no hydraulics. No hydralics means there’s no controls period.”
There is a little ram jet engine that drops down and will power the hydralics and provide power to the instruments if the engines are not running.
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