How ya doin', buddy?
Today, I will be talking about a story that shook America, and even the whole world. A story of planes.
So you may be wondering, " Roman, what are you talking about ?" Or " Roman, you are very funny"
which I indeed am.
And if you asked the first question, I will be answering now( it's not that I don't like people who asked the second one but I have an article to make).
Let's get into it.
Do you know this man ? I didn't know him either until very recently, yesterday, to be exact.
He is called Chelsey Sullenberger, or " Sully".
I'm sure most of the people in the BFI, among the students, would not recognize him. It's normal. He became famous in January 2009. I wasn't even born. I know him only because I saw the movie about him , made in 2016 by Clint Eastwood, starring Tom Hanks, "Sully"which you should check out because it's very good ( even critics said it was excellent).
I will in any case tell the story like I saw it in the movie ( in the right chronological order) and with data that I found on Wikipedia The movie was inspired by the book "Sully" wrote : Highest Duty : my search for what really matters.
Don't hesitate to check on Wikipedia for all of the data if you are interested, I didn't bother including it here because it would slow down the narration.
They also have an audio of what happened ( but if you watch the film, that will be unnecessary)
So what has this man done ?
Chelsey Sullenberger, born in 1951 in Texas, is a airline pilot, a great one. He,apparently, at the moment the story starts, has piloted planes for 42 years, and more than 20 000 hours of flight of experience. He even says in the film that more than 1 million people arrived at their destination thanks to him.
On January 15, 2009, he is in charge of the flight US Airways 1549, an Airbus A320, departing from the Airport of LaGuardia in New York to Seattle. At 15:27:11In the middle of the city,at 859m of altitude, the plane got hit by Canada Geese, resulting in both engine failure, which ,put simply, means they have no motors anymore, or in gen Z terms, they are cooked 🥀.
Sullenberger takes control of the plane while his copilot, Jeffrey Skiles, verifies the checklist for engine restart. The aircraft continues to rise, reaching 930m above the ground then begins its descent. At 15:27:33, Sully calls in urgence the TRACON, the Terminal Radar Approach Control of New York. An air traffic controller tells to LaGuardia to hold all departures and directs Sully to Runway 13, to which he responds " Unable".
He asks for landing options at Teterboro Airport, to which he is given permission to land. He first says "Yes" but then replies with " We can't do it... We're gonna be in the Hudson (river)". They pass 270m above the George Washington Bridge.
Suddenly, Sully talks to everyone in the aircraft via the microphone : " Brace for Impact."
Meanwhile, air traffic controllers ask the Coast Guard to caution vessels in the Hudson and ask them to prepare to help with the rescue.
The air traffic controller that first talked with Sully in the call thinks they are dead. He lost their signal on the radar. Nobody ever survived a water landing, not with that kind of aircraft.
At approximately 15:30,the plane made an unpowered ditching, descending at about 230 km/h into the middle of the North River section of the Hudson river.
Flight attendants compared the ditching to a "hard landing" with "one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration". The ebb tide then began to take the plane southward.
Quickly, Sully gives the order to evacuate. The passengers do so through the four overwing window exits and into an inflatable slide raft deployed from the front right passenger door (the front left slide failed to operate, so the manual inflation handle was pulled).
The evacuation was made more difficult by the fact that someone opened the rear left door, allowing more water to enter the plane.
Keep in mind that's it's mid January,the air and water temperatures are about 19 °F (−7 °C) and 41 °F (5 °C), respectively.
Some passengers are old, one is in a wheelchair.
Sully walks the cabin twice to confirm it is empty.
Some evacuees wait for rescue knee-deep in water on the partially submerged slides, with some wearing life vests. Others stand on the wings or, fearing an explosion, swim away from the plane.
Help then arrived, on boats and helicopters, with sea divers rescuing those who swam away.
Passengers and crew sustained 95 minor and 5 serious injuries, including a deep laceration on a flight attendant's leg. 78 people received medical treatment, mostly for minor injuries and hypothermia;24 passengers and two rescuers were treated at hospitals, with two passengers kept overnight. Eye damage from jet fuel caused one passenger to need glasses.But no one died. A miracle.
That is due to the rescuers, the crew, and the passengers themselves, of course. But Sully landed perfectly, with the best angle possible, with a plane that wasn't supposed to land there.
It didn't break in half. Sully was the first in history to pull off something like that. Sully, even before the investigation to know what exactly happened was finished, had already been considered as a hero.
Each passenger later received a letter of apology, $5,000 in compensation for lost baggage (and $5,000 more if they could demonstrate larger losses), and a refund of their ticket price. In May 2009, they received any belongings that had been recovered. Passengers also reported offers of $10,000 each in return for agreeing not to sue US Airways.
In an effort to prevent similar accidents, officials captured and exterminated 1,235 Canada geese at 17 locations across New York City in mid-2009 and coated 1,739 goose eggs with oil. As of 2017, 70,000 birds had been intentionally killed in New York City.
In the movie, the investigation around the incident to determine if Sully and Jeff were responsible was dramatised to add tension, but in reality the people who investigated just wanted to prevent further incidents and ensure the safety of passengers. They later found, which you can see better in the movie, that Skiles and Sullenberger did the perfect thing to do, without calculations, just based on experience.
U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "inspired by the skill and heroism of the flight crew", and praised the emergency responders and volunteers. President-elect Barack Obama said that everyone was proud of Sullenberger's "heroic and graceful job in landing the damaged aircraft". He thanked the crew, whom he invited to his inauguration five days later.
(This is just a sample of how recognised they were for their acts)
So ,indeed, the crew , Skiles, and Sullenberger pulled off a miracle, rewrote the history of planes, did something thought of as impossible.
Thanks for reading my article!!!
By the way, Clint Eastwood composed the music, not Hans Zimmer.
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