June 16, 2009

To the Judges:

When a US Airways jetliner crash-landed in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, The Associated Press reacted immediately to produce a series of insightful, compelling and exclusive stories over the next 24 hours that demonstrated the power of the world’s largest news organization on a major, fast-breaking story.

In the minutes after the plane splashed down, the AP quickly confirmed that, amazingly, everybody on board had survived and even injuries were minimal. The world became transfixed by a story that New York Gov. David Paterson aptly dubbed “a miracle on the Hudson.”

Taking full advantage of the AP’s proximity to the crash site, steps away from our offices, we quickly reached witnesses and passengers who provided an up-close account of how the episode unfolded, along with powerful quotes and color from rescuers and others at the scene.

By the end of the night, the AP had a comprehensive mainbar, sidebars on the pilot and the passenger, a reconstruct of the ill-fated flight, and a closer look at the threat of birds in American aviation. It was a company-wide effort that included several powerful and exclusive images by our many photographers on the ground; multiple video packages; interactive graphics that explained how the flight failed; and bureaus around the country being enlisted in the reporting effort, from California to North Carolina to Washington, D.C.

The fruits of these efforts became clear immediately, with AP owning coverage online throughout the evening and next day and dominating front pages around the nation on this hugely competitive story.

The AP followed up its solid first-day effort with a string of powerful second-day stories, with the mainbar focusing on how thick mud and menacing currents stymied investigators in the search for engines from the plane. Within the first 24 hours, the AP also had reached out to several more survivors to better explain those horrifying 15 minutes of the flight, while obtaining transcripts of the pilot’s radio transmissions and gathering even more information and context to explain the danger of bird strikes.

For this outstanding work, I’m proud to nominate the AP New York City staff in the Deadline Reporting category of the Associated Press Managing Editors contest.

Sincerely,

   James Martinez

   The Associated Press

   Deputy National Editor

   212 621-1607

   m 917-557-1825

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ US Airways plane crashes into Hudson River in New York; boats rescuing passengers.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways plane has crashed into the Hudson River, sending passengers fleeing for safety in the frigid waters.

¶   New York City firefighters are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries.

¶   Witness Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, said, "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water."

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways plane has crashed into the Hudson River, sending passengers fleeing for safety in the frigid waters.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday when the crash occured.

¶   Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, may have been hit by birds.

¶   New York City firefighters are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries.

¶   Witness Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, said, "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water."

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways plane has crashed into the Hudson River, sending passengers fleeing for safety in the frigid waters.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday when the crash occured in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

¶   Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, may have been hit by birds.

¶   The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews had opened the door and were pulling passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Several boats surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking.

¶   New York City firefighters are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries.

¶   "I saw what appeared to be a tail fin of a plane sticking out of the water," said Erica Schietinger, whose office windows at Chelsea Piers look out over the Hudson. "All the boats have sort of circled the area. ... I can't tell what's what at this point."

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ Government official says 2 engines of plane that went down in Hudson disabled by bird strike.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways plane crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending passengers fleeing for safety in the frigid waters, a government official says.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

¶   Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, appears to have hit one or more birds.

¶   The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews had opened the door and were pulling passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Several boats surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking.

¶   Government officials do not believe the crash is related to terrorism.

¶   "There is no information at this time to indicate that this is a security-related incident," Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. "We continue to closely monitor the situation which at present is focused on search and rescue."

¶   New York City firefighters and the U.S. Coast Guard are responding to the crash. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries.

¶   "I saw what appeared to be a tail fin of a plane sticking out of the water," said Erica Schietinger, whose office windows at Chelsea Piers look out over the Hudson. "All the boats have sort of circled the area. ... I can't tell what's what at this point."

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ Homeland Security and FBI officials say there's no indication that a plane crash in New York City was terrorism.

¶   FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the bureau is aware of the crash in the Hudson River but says investigators have no information suggesting it was, as he called it, a security-related incident.

¶   Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said the same thing. Early indications from government officials was that the plane was disabled after striking birds.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways plane crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after striking a bird that disabled two engines, sending 150 on board scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown says the US Airways Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport enroute to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

¶   Brown says the plane, an Airbus 320, appears to have hit one or more birds.

¶   A law enforcement official said that authorities are not aware of any deaths and that the passengers do not appear to be seriously injured. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the rescue was still under way.

¶   The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews had opened the door and were pulling passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Several boats surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking.

¶   Government officials do not believe the crash is related to terrorism.

¶   "There is no information at this time to indicate that this is a security-related incident," Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. "We continue to closely monitor the situation which at present is focused on search and rescue."

¶   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."

¶   New York City firefighters and the U.S. Coast Guard are responding to the crash.

¶   "I saw what appeared to be a tail fin of a plane sticking out of the water," said Erica Schietinger, whose office windows at Chelsea Piers look out over the Hudson. "All the boats have sort of circled the area."

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

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^Associated Press Writer<

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways jetliner crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds disabled both its engines, sending more than 150 passengers and crew members scrambling onto rescue boats, authorities say. No deaths or serious injuries were immediately reported.

¶   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 minutes later, Brown said.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows. Rescue crews opened the door and pulled passengers in yellow life vests from the plane. Rescue boats and ferry boats that ply the Hudson surrounded the plane, which appeared to be slowly sinking in the near-freezing water on one of the coldest days of the year, with a temperature 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."

¶   New York City firefighters and the Coast Guard worked to rescue the passengers. The fuselage appeared intact, and the plane appeared to be sitting high in the water well after the crash with rescuers standing on the wings once they reached the site.

¶   "I saw what appeared to be a tail fin of a plane sticking out of the water," said Erica Schietinger, whose office windows look out over the Hudson. "All the boats have sort of circled the area."

¶   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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways jetliner crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a flock of birds apparently disabled both its engines, but rescuers pulled the more than 150 passengers and crew members into boats before the plane sank, authorities say.

¶   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 minutes later, Brown said.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   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 eventually sank 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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%xhl(Jet with 155 aboard ditches in Hudson River after engines fail; all aboard safe%)

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but rescuers pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank, authorities say.

¶   There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

¶   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 minutes later, Brown said.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   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 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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^By DAVID B. CARUSO<

^Associated Press Writer<

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but rescuers pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank.

¶   There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

¶   Flight 1549 went down minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., splashing into the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown. "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard an explosion two or three minutes into the flight, looked out the left side of the Airbus 320 and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started saying prayers. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   The pilot reported a "double bird strike" less than a minute after taking off, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. The controller sent the aircraft back toward LaGuardia, but the pilot saw an airport below him and asked what it was, Church said. It was Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and the pilot asked to land there, Church said.

¶   The instruction to land at Teterboro was the last communication with the plane before it went down in the river, Church said.

¶   US Airways said 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.

¶   In the rare cases in which birds get sucked into an engine, "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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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^Associated Press Writer<

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ Mayor Michael Bloomberg says police divers had to rescue some passengers from underwater after a jetliner carrying 155 people crashed in the Hudson River.

¶   Bloomberg says he has spoken with the pilot and a passenger who claimed to be the last one off the plane. All passengers survived.

¶   The mayor said, "It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out."

¶   Bloomberg says most of the rescued were picked up right away and put on police, Coast Guard and ferry boats. He says divers pulled a few passengers from underwater.

¶   Flight 1549 went down minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., splashing into the river near midtown Manhattan.

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%xhl(Jet with 155 aboard ditches in Hudson River after engines fail; all aboard safe%)

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but officials said rescuers pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank.

¶   There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

¶   Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an experienced pilot, said it appeared the pilot did "a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure everybody got out." And Gov. David Patterson pronounced it "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   Flight 1549 went down minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., splashing into the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown. "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard an explosion two or three minutes into the flight, looked out the left side of the Airbus A320 and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows when rescuers in police and 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.

¶   Police divers rescued a few people from the water, Bloomberg said. Other passengers were able to walk out onto the wings, then onto rescue boats.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. The Coast Guard said it rescued 35 people who were immersed in the cold water and ferried them to shore. Most were sent to hospitals. No information was released on their condition.

¶   Witnesses said the 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   The pilot reported a "double bird strike" less than a minute after taking off, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. The controller sent the aircraft back toward LaGuardia, but the pilot saw an airport below him and asked what it was, Church said. It was Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and the pilot asked to land there, Church said.

¶   The instruction to land at Teterboro was the last communication with the plane before it went into the river, Church said.

¶   US Airways said 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board the jetliner.

¶   "This is really a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most spectacular days in the history of New York City's agencies, its coordination and the greatness of the people that work here and all they did for those passengers who are now tonight going to go home to their families," the governor said.

¶   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.

¶   In the rare cases in which birds get sucked into an engine, "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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Colleen Long in New York City, Joan Lowy, Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

dsa-a online

^BC-Plane in River, 11th Ld-Writethru,1213<

^URGENT<

%xhl(Jet with 155 aboard ditches in Hudson River after engines fail; all aboard safe%)

^Eds: UPDATES with details on injuries, name of pilot, witness quote.<

^AP Photo NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239<

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH<

^Disabled jet ditches into NYC river; all rescued<

^By DAVID B. CARUSO<

^Associated Press Writer<

¶  

Doc: 00062577 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 18:59:32 2009

a1080‡-----

u abx

¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engin0es, but officials said rescuers safely pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank.

¶   Gov. David Paterson pronounced it "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   Flight 1549 went down minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., splashing into the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown. "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard an explosion two or three minutes into the flight, looked out the left side of the Airbus A320 and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Rescuers in police and Coast Guard vessels and ferry boats rapidly converged on the plane and pulled passengers in life vests from the aircraft, which was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows, its fuselage still apparently intact. The plane went down on one of the coldest days of the year, with air temperature around 20 degrees and the water 41.

¶   Police divers rescued a few people from the water, Bloomberg said. Other passengers were able to walk out onto the wings, then onto rescue boats.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. The Coast Guard said it rescued 35 people who were immersed in the cold water and ferried them to shore. Fire officials said at least half the people on board were sent to hospitals with hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries. Paramedic Helen Rodriguez said the worst injury she saw was a woman with two broken legs.

¶   There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

¶   Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an experienced pilot, said it appeared the pilot "did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure everybody got out."

¶   Witnesses said the 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   The pilot reported a "double bird strike" less than a minute after taking off, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. The controller sent the aircraft back toward LaGuardia, but the pilot saw an airport below him and asked what it was, Church said. It was Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and the pilot asked to land there, Church said.

¶   The instruction to land at Teterboro was the last communication with the plane before it went into the river, Church said.

¶   US Airways said 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board.

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still going on identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif. Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways, flying routes in North America, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Hawaii. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   "This is really a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most spectacular days in the history of New York City's agencies, its coor0dination and the greatness of the people that work here and all they did for those passengers who are now tonight going to go home to their families," the governor said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who lives in Charlotte and was on way home from a business trip, told CNN: "As soon as we hit the water, the doors were opened on both sides of the plane." He said some passengers went into the water.

¶   "We were worried about them," he said. "The folks in the water took the worst of it."

¶   Asked what he would say to the pilot and co-pilot, Berretta said: "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

¶   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.

¶   In the rare cases in which birds get sucked into an engine, "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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Colleen Long in New York City, Joan Lowy, Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

dsa-a online

^BC-Plane in River, 12th Ld-Writethru,1207<

^URGENT<

%xhl(Jet with 155 aboard ditches in Hudson River after engines fail; all aboard safe%)

^Eds: FIXES garble in lead.<

^AP Photo NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239<

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH<

^Disabled jet ditches into NYC river; all rescued<

^By DAVID B. CARUSO<

^Associated Press Writer<

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00062595 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 19:04:34 2009

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a1084‡-----

u abx

¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but officials said rescuers safely pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank.

¶   Gov. David Paterson pronounced it "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   Flight 1549 went down minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., splashing into the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

¶   "There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown. "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."

¶   Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard an explosion two or three minutes into the flight, looked out the left side of the Airbus A320 and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Rescuers in police and Coast Guard vessels and ferry boats rapidly converged on the plane and pulled passengers in life vests out the doors of the aircraft, which was submerged in the icy water up to its windows, its fuselage still apparently intact. The plane went down on one of the coldest days of the year, with the air temperature around 20 degrees and the water 41.

¶   Police divers rescued a few people from the water, Bloomberg said. Other passengers were able to walk out onto the wings, then onto rescue boats.

¶   There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. The Coast Guard said it rescued 35 people who were immersed in the cold water and ferried them to shore. Fire officials said at least half the people on board were sent to hospitals with hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries. Paramedic Helen Rodriguez said the worst injury she saw was a woman with two broken legs.

¶   Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an experienced pilot, said it appeared the pilot "did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure everybody got out."

¶   Witnesses said the 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."

¶   Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   The pilot reported a "double bird strike" less than a minute after taking off, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. The controller sent the aircraft back toward LaGuardia, but the pilot saw an airport below him and asked what it was, Church said. It was Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, and the pilot asked to land there, Church said.

¶   The instruction to land at Teterboro was the last communication with the plane before it went into the river, Church said.

¶   US Airways said 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board.

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still going on identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif. Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways, flying routes in North America, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Hawaii. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   "This is really a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most spectacular days in the history of New York City's agencies, its coordination and the greatness of the people that work here and all they did for those passengers who are now tonight going to go home to their families," the governor said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who lives in Charlotte and was on way home from a business trip, told CNN: "As soon as we hit the water, the doors were opened on both sides of the plane." He said some passengers went into the water.

¶   "We were worried about them," he said. "The folks in the water took the worst of it."

¶   Asked what he would say to the pilot and co-pilot, Berretta said: "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

¶   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.

¶   In the rare cases in which birds get sucked into an engine, "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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Colleen Long in New York City, Joan Lowy, Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

dsa-a online

^BC-Plane in River, 13th Ld-Writethru,1081<

^URGENT<

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^Eds: New throughout. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane will be published Thursday evening in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

^AP Photo NYDP109, NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239<

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH<

^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<

^By DAVID B. CARUSO<

^Associated Press Writer<

%meta(ap_subject:General;%)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00062642 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 19:11:44 2009

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A US Airways pilot guided his jetliner into the frigid Hudson River after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines just after takeoff Thursday, and all 155 people on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   The plane, an Airbus A320 that had taken off minutes earlier from LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, N.C., was submerged up to its windows in the river when rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waited in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane for help.

¶   Police drivers had to rescue some of the passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. State environmental officials estimated the water was 41 degrees.

¶   "It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out," Bloomberg said.

¶   Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard a single explosion two or three minutes into the flight. He said looked out the left side of the plane and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He added: "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing."

¶   Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Bob Read, a television producer who saw the crash from his office window, said it appeared to be a "controlled descent."

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   The plane splashed into the water roughly off 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif.

¶   Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

dsa-a online

^BC-Plane in River, 14th Ld-Writethru,1466<

^URGENT<

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^Eds: ADDS detail on rescues, other changes. ADDS byline. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane will be published Thursday evening in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

^AP Photo NYDP109, NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239, GFX244, GFX243, GFX242, GFX241<

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<

^By DAVID B. CARUSO and MARCUS FRANKLIN<

^Associated Press Writer<

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00062979 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 20:15:33 2009

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ With both engines out, a cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crowded jetliner along the Hudson River and ditched it in the frigid water Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   The plane, a US Airways Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds during takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport and was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waited in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane for help.

¶   Police divers had to rescue some of the passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. State environmental officials estimated the water was 41 degrees.

¶   "It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out," Bloomberg said.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who was on his way home to Charlotte from a business trip, told CNN doors were opened on both sides of the plane "as soon as we hit the water."

¶   Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Bob Read, a television producer who saw the crash from his office window, said it appeared to be a "controlled descent."

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   It was not clear why the pilot did not land at Teterboro. Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif.

¶   Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. Hef started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   The plane remained afloat but sinking slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. Bloomberg said the aircraft finally wound up near Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan and about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00063062 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 20:32:26 2009

^BC-Plane in River, 15th Ld-Writethru,1520<

%headline(^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<%)

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^1110<

^Eds: ADDS passenger quote, RESTORES first reference to Kolodjay. UPDATES water temp. Commander Moore is cq. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane will be published Thursday evening in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

%photo(^AP Photo NYDP109, NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239, GFX244, GFX243, GFX242, GFX241<%)

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

%pubinfo(States:BA; US:; Intl:; Fmts:Print, Online; Other:CT NJ NY nat ami onl ;%)

%strytype(ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True;%)

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%byline(^By DAVID B. CARUSO and MARCUS FRANKLIN=%)

%bytitle(^Associated Press Writers=%)

¶  

¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ With both engines out, a cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crowded jetliner over New York City and ditched it in the frigid Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   The plane, a US Airways Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds during takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport and was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   "He was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what _ the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he added.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   Police divers had to rescue some of the passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. The water temperature was 36 degrees, Coast Guard Lt. Commander Moore said. He estimates that hypothermia can hit within five to eight minutes at that temperature.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" passenger Jeff Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who was on his way home to Charlotte from a business trip, told CNN doors were opened on both sides of the plane "as soon as we hit the water."

¶   Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Bob Read, a television producer who saw the crash from his office window, said it appeared to be a "controlled descent."

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   It was not clear why the pilot did not land at Teterboro. Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif.

¶   Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. Hef started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   The plane remained afloat but sinking slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. Bloomberg said the aircraft finally wound up near Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan and about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00063143 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 20:55:01 2009

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^BC-Plane in River, 16th Ld-Writethru,1510<

%headline(^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<%)

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^1110<

^Eds: CORRECTS pilot's name to Chesley, sted Chelsey. Commander Moore is cq. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane is available in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

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^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ With both engines out, a cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crowded jetliner over New York City and ditched it in the frigid Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   The US Airways Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds during takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport, apparently disabling the engines.

¶   The pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what _ the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he added.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   Police divers had to rescue some of the passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. The water temperature was 36 degrees, Coast Guard Lt. Commander Moore said. He estimates that hypothermia can hit within five to eight minutes at that temperature.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" passenger Jeff Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who was on his way home to Charlotte from a business trip, told CNN doors were opened on both sides of the plane "as soon as we hit the water."

¶   Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   It was not clear why the pilot did not land at Teterboro. Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot Sullenberger. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville.

¶   Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   The plane remained afloat but sinking slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. Bloomberg said the aircraft finally wound up near Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan and about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00063285 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 21:33:36 2009

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^BC-Plane in River, 17th Ld-Writethru,1488<

%headline(^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<%)

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^1110<

^Eds: Minor edits. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane is available in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

%photo(^AP Photo NYDP109, NYDP103, NYDP105, NY130, GFX240, GFX239, GFX244, GFX243, GFX242, GFX241<%)

^AP Graphic NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crippled jetliner over New York City and ditched it in the frigid Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   The US Airways Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds just after takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport, apparently disabling the engines.

¶   The pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what _ the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he added.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   Police divers had to rescue some passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. The Coast Guard said the water temperature was 36 degrees.

¶   "The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" passenger Jeff Kolodjay said. He said passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying. He said the plane hit the water pretty hard, but he was fine.

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Another passenger, Fred Berretta, who was on his way home to Charlotte from a business trip, told CNN doors were opened on both sides of the plane "as soon as we hit the water."

¶   Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   It was not clear why the pilot did not land at Teterboro. Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot Sullenberger. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville.

¶   Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   The plane remained afloat but sinking slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. Bloomberg said the aircraft finally wound up near Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan and about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Joan Lowy and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00063508 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 22:31:31 2009

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^BC-Plane in River, 18th Ld-Writethru,1675<

%headline(^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<%)

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^1110<

^Eds: CORRECTS pilot's age. UPDATES with fresh passenger quotes, expert comment, plane towed and docked. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane is available in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

%photo(^AP Photo NY149, NYDP113, NYDP109, NYDP103, GFX240, GFX239, GFX244, GFX243, GFX242, GFX241<%)

^AP Graphics NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

%strytype(ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True;%)

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^gend/ccarlson gend/amthomas usae/jhoffner ap_subject:General;<

%byline(^By DAVID B. CARUSO and MARCUS FRANKLIN=%)

%bytitle(^Associated Press Writers=%)

¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crippled jetliner over New York City and ditched it in the frigid Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds just after takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport, apparently disabling the engines.

¶   The pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what, the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he said.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived, including Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that happened to be nearby. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries. An infant was on board and appeared to be fine, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. The Coast Guard said the water temperature was 36 degrees.

¶   Dave Sanderson, who was flying home to Charlotte after a business trip, said the sound of an explosion was followed by passengers running up the aisle and people being shoved out of the way.

¶   As the plane descended, passenger Vallie Collins tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing." He was desperately trying to figure out whether she had been on the downed plane when the message arrived 30 minutes later.

¶   Another passenger, Jeff Kolodjay, said people put their heads in their laps and prayed. He said the captain instructed them to "brace for impact because we're going down."

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Witnesses said the pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   As water slowly filled the cabin, Sanderson said he and another passenger helped people out onto the wing. One woman had a 3-year-old child, he said, and safely tossed the toddler onto a raft before climbing on herself.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   The plane took off at 3:26 p.m. for a flight that would last only five minutes. It was less than a minute after takeoff when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the pilot apparently meant that birds had hit both of the plane's jet engines.

¶   The controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J., but it was not clear why the pilot did not land there.

¶   Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Sullenberger. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville.

¶   Sullenberger, 57, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   Eric Doten, a Florida aviation safety consultant, said he could not recall another example of a modern jetliner water crash in which everyone survived. He said many things had to go right to avert catastrophe: The plane didn't cartwheel when it hit, the fuselage remained intact, and the fuel did not ignite _ in fact its buoyancy probably helped the plane stay afloat.

¶   The plane sank slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. A Fire Department boat tugged the plane to the southern tip of Manhattan and docked it there.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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 took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Joan Lowy and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Doc: 00063573 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 22:47:49 2009

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^BC-Plane in River, 19th Ld-Writethru,1657<

%headline(^Pilot ditches plane into frigid river; 155 survive<%)

%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

^1110<

^Eds: Minor edits. Multimedia: An interactive with a map of the area, the plane's route and a schematic of the plane is available in the _national/plane_crash_ny folder. AP Video.<

%photo(^AP Photo NY149, NYDP113, NYDP109, NYDP103, GFX240, GFX239, GFX244, GFX243, GFX242, GFX241<%)

^AP Graphics NY PLANE CRASH, PLANE CRASH 2, PLANE CRASH 3, PLANE CRASH LARGE, PLANE CRASH BIRD<

%strytype(ContentType:Spot Development; ContentElement:FullStory; Breaking:True;%)

%junkline(^gend/ccarlson<%)

^gend/ccarlson gend/amthomas usae/jhoffner ap_subject:General;<

%byline(^By DAVID B. CARUSO and MARCUS FRANKLIN=%)

%bytitle(^Associated Press Writers=%)

¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ A cool-headed pilot maneuvered his crippled jetliner over New York City and ditched it in the frigid Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. It was, the governor said, "a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

¶   US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 bound for Charlotte, N.C., struck a flock of birds just after takeoff minutes earlier at LaGuardia Airport, apparently disabling the engines.

¶   The pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what, the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he said.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived, including Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that happened to be nearby. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries. An infant was on board and appeared to be fine, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. The Coast Guard said the water temperature was 36 degrees.

¶   Dave Sanderson, who was flying home to Charlotte after a business trip, said the sound of an explosion was followed by passengers running up the aisle and people being shoved out of the way.

¶   As the plane descended, passenger Vallie Collins tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing." He was desperately trying to figure out whether she had been on the downed plane when the message arrived.

¶   Another passenger, Jeff Kolodjay, said people put their heads in their laps and prayed. He said the captain instructed them to "brace for impact because we're going down."

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Witnesses said the pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   As water slowly filled the cabin, Sanderson said he and another passenger helped people out onto the wing. One woman had a 3-year-old child, he said, and safely tossed the toddler onto a raft before climbing on herself.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes of the crash, and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   The plane took off at 3:26 p.m. for a flight that would last only five minutes. It was less than a minute after takeoff when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the pilot apparently meant that birds had hit both of the plane's jet engines.

¶   The controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J., but it was not clear why the pilot did not land there.

¶   Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

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

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Sullenberger. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville.

¶   Sullenberger, 57, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   Eric Doten, a Florida aviation safety consultant, said he could not recall another example of a modern jetliner water crash in which everyone survived. He said many things had to go right to avert catastrophe: The plane didn't cartwheel when it hit, the fuselage remained intact, and the fuel did not ignite _ in fact its buoyancy probably helped the plane stay afloat.

¶   The plane sank slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. A Fire Department boat tugged the plane to the southern tip of Manhattan and docked it there.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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 took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Joan Lowy and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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%xhl(`Miracle on the Hudson': Plane lands in frigid river after hitting birds; all 155 survive%)

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ As the plane descended over New York City, its engines crippled, people ran through the aisle and bowed their heads to pray. One woman sent a text message to her husband: "My plane is crashing." Passengers were instructed to brace for impact.

¶   Then the cool-headed pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 brought it down safely _ floated it, one man said _ into the frigid Hudson River. One survivor said the impact felt like little more than a rear-end car collision.

¶   All 155 people on board survived, plucked to safety by a small fleet of Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that converged on the crash site within minutes. A paramedic said a woman had two broken legs, but there were no other major injuries.

¶   "We had a miracle on 34th Street," Gov. David Paterson said. "I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson."

¶   The plane, which had left LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., on a flight that ultimately lasted only five minutes, was disabled when it collided with a flock of birds.

¶   The pilot reported the strike and told air traffic controllers he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

¶   Instead, for reasons not immediately clear, the pilot, identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III of Danville, Calif., chose to guide it into the Hudson, where the water temperature was 36 degrees.

¶   Sullenberger "was phenomenal," passenger Joe Hart said. "He landed it _ I tell you what, the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you.

¶   "Both engines cut out and he actually floated it into the river," he said.

¶   In a city still wounded from the aerial attack on the World Trade Center, authorities were quick to assure the public that terrorism wasn't involved.

¶   The plane was submerged up to its windows in the river by the time rescuers arrived, including Coast Guard vessels and commuter ferries that happened to be nearby. Some passengers waded in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane and waiting for help.

¶   Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries. An infant was on board and appeared to be fine, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

¶   The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York.

¶   Dave Sanderson, who was flying home to Charlotte after a business trip, said the sound of an explosion was followed by passengers running up the aisle and people being shoved out of the way.

¶   As the plane descended, passenger Vallie Collins tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing."

¶   Another passenger, Jeff Kolodjay, said people put their heads in their laps and prayed. He said the captain instructed them to "brace for impact because we're going down."

¶   "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing," Kolodjay said.

¶   Witnesses said the pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.

¶   As water slowly filled the cabin, Sanderson said he and another passenger helped people out onto the wing. One woman had a 3-year-old child, he said, and safely tossed the toddler onto a raft before climbing on herself.

¶   One commuter ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes and some of its own riders grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

¶   "They were cheering when we pulled up," ferry captain Vincent Lombardi. "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up, hurry up.'"

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

¶   Two police scuba divers said they pulled another woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Another woman fell off a rescue raft, and the divers said they swam over and put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   Church said there was no mayday call from the plane's transponder. The plane splashed into the water near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan _ one of the busiest and most closely watched stretches of the river.

¶   US Airways CEO Doug Parker said 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board.

¶   An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Sullenberger. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville.

¶   Sullenberger, 57, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

¶   Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

¶   Eric Doten, a Florida aviation safety consultant, said he could not recall another example of a modern jetliner water crash in which everyone survived. He said many things had to go right to avert catastrophe: The plane didn't cartwheel when it hit, the fuselage remained intact, and the fuel did not ignite _ in fact its buoyancy probably helped the plane stay afloat.

¶   The plane sank slowly as it drifted downriver until only about half of the tail fin and rudder were above water. A Fire Department boat tugged the plane to the southern tip of Manhattan and docked it there.

¶   The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

¶   "They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

¶   The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight 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 took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Joan Lowy and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington; Richard Pyle, Adam Goldman, Colleen Long and Deborah Hastings in New York; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

The Rescue PMer:

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Doc: 00064371 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Fri Jan 16 04:08:36 2009

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%headline(^Swift response, heroics in NY river landing rescue<%)

%xhl(Fleet of ferries, emergency crews quickly help 155 escape jet after it lands in Hudson River%)

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ As Capt. Brittany Catanzaro eased her commuter ferry, the Thomas Kean, into the Hudson River, she saw an eye-popping sight: a US Airways jet, bobbing on the tide.

¶   "I couldn't believe it," said the 20-year-old, a captain for just five months. "But we train for man-overboard situations. Twice a month. And I knew what we had to do."

¶   The ferries that ply the waters between New York and New Jersey were among the first rescue craft on the scene Thursday when Flight 1549 splashed down after engine failure. The fast actions of their crews, combined with the heroic efforts of emergency responders, produced an amazing result: All 155 people on board were pulled to safety.

¶   From the initial cry of "man overboard!" it took only a few minutes for the first boat to arrive at the jet's side. Captains said they approached cautiously to avoid swamping the jet and sending the frightened passengers standing on its wing into the freezing water.

¶   Some passengers let out cheers when the Thomas Jefferson ferry pulled up, the first of 14 vessels to render aid.

¶   "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up, hurry up,'" Capt. Vincent Lombardi said. "We gave them the jackets off our backs."

¶   Lombardi's crew plucked 56 passengers from the jet's wing and life rafts. Wide-eyed ferry passengers, their evening commute disrupted, helped out, tossing life jackets and ropes to the crash victims below.

¶   Catanzaro's boat picked up 24 people.

¶   The fire department in New York got the first emergency call at 3:31 p.m. and was on the scene in less than five minutes. Across the river, Weehawken, N.J., police, firefighters and emergency medical crews boarded ferries awaiting rush hour and headed to the plane, minutes after the pilot guided the jet into the water.

¶   New York City police detectives John McKenna and James Coll, of the department's Emergency Services Unit, commandeered a sightseeing ferry at 42nd Street.

¶   As they arrived at the sinking fuselage, Sgt. Michael McGuinness and Detective Sean Mulcahy tied ropes around themselves that were also tied to their colleagues. They stayed on board as McKenna and Coll entered the plane to rescue four other passengers still inside.

¶   High above, divers Michael Delaney and Robert Rodriguez of the New York Police Department dropped from a helicopter into the water. From the air, Delaney said, "it all looked very orderly. The plane's crew appeared to do a great job."

¶   Both divers spotted a woman in the water, hanging onto the side of a ferry boat and "frightened out of her mind," Rodriguez said. "She's very lethargic."

¶   "I see panic out of this woman," Rodriguez said. "She's very cold, so she's unable to climb up."

¶   The two pulled another female passenger from the water as other passengers sat calmly on the plane's flotation devices, waiting to board the ferries clustered nearby.

¶   Both divers climbed onto the wing and entered the plane, and confirmed everyone was off.

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries. Fire officials said at least half the people on board were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson heaped praise on the rescue effort.

¶   "They train for these kinds of emergencies, and you saw it in action," Bloomberg said. "Because of their fast brave work, we think that contributed to the fact that it looks like everybody is safe."

¶   Paterson said it was a miracle.

¶   "I think that in simplicity, this is really a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most spectacular days in the history of New York City's agencies," he said.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Marcus Franklin, Samantha Gross and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

Survivors PMer:

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ The most terrifying moment came when Vallie Collins was caught in the back galley of the plane _ water seeping in from exits that would open only a crack, and dozens of passengers bearing down on her, frantic to get out.

¶   "Trying as hard as we could to push both of those doors," Collins said, recounting the moments after Flight 1549 touched down on the Hudson River on Thursday. "And the flight attendant said: `We probably only have two minutes.'"

¶   Just seconds before, Collins had been convinced she would die on impact. Now, with the frigid river water swirling around her waist and seat cushions floating between the passengers, she believed she was going to drown.

¶   But there was daylight ahead, toward the front of the plane, and Collins, a 37-year-old mother of three from Maryville, Tenn., drew on her memories of being a high school cheerleader.

¶   "I put my hands up and said: "You can't get out this way. ... Go to the wings! Keep moving, people! We're going to make it. Stay calm."

¶   It was only when she was safe aboard a rescue ferry that she felt her panic _ and gratitude. "We were just very fortunate. Very blessed," Collins said.

¶   That sentiment was echoed by a number of passengers on the US Airways flight, amazed to be alive after the jet ditched in the water following an apparent collision with a flock of birds.

¶   "You've got to give it to the pilot," said Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn. "He made a hell of a landing."

¶   Soon after the plane took off from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., Collins _ seated in the last row, in 26D _ heard a boom and started smelling smoke. When the captain came over the loudspeaker and said "brace for impact," she immediately reached for her phone.

¶   "I thought, `OK, I'm not going to see my husband and three children again.' And I just want them to know at this point, they were the No. 1 thought in my mind," she said hours after the ordeal.

¶   She sent them a text message: "My plane is crashing." There was no time for the final three words she wanted to include: "I love you."

¶   Dave Sanderson, 47, of Charlotte, who works for Oracle Corp., was headed home after a business trip. The married father of four was in seat 15A, on the left side of the plane.

¶   "I heard an explosion, and I saw flames coming from the left wing and I thought, `This isn't good,'" he said. "Then it was just controlled chaos. People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way."

¶   Kolodjay, 31, who had been headed to a golfing trip in Myrtle Beach, S.C., said he noticed a jolt and felt the plane drop. He looked out the left side of the jet and saw one of the engines on fire.

¶   "Then the captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. "It was intense." He said some passengers started praying. He said a few Hail Marys.

¶   "It was bad, man," Kolodjay said. But he and others spoke of a sense of calm and purpose that quickly descended on the passengers and crew as the plane started filling with water and rescue boats swarmed to the scene. They decided women and children would be evacuated first.

¶   "Then the rest of us got out," he said.

¶   One woman had two small children who couldn't swim. She held on to the infant, and Collins, aboard an emergency raft, grabbed hold of the older girl, who was not yet 3.

¶   "She was so scared. She had a little blue blanket, and she just was hunkered in my lap," Collins said. "She just kept biting on my left arm _ she never said a word." The group was pulled aboard a rescue vessel.

¶   Emergency medical service worker Helen Rodriguez was one of the first rescuers on the scene. She saw stunned, soaking passengers, saying "I can't believe I'm alive." The worst injury she saw was a woman with two broken legs.

¶   Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, many for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries, fire officials said.

¶   Police scuba divers arrived at the scene to see a woman in her late 30s or early 40s in the water, hanging onto the side of a ferry boat.

¶   She was "frightened out of her mind," suffering from hypothermia and unable to climb out of the water, said Detective Robert Rodriguez of the New York Police Department.

¶   The detectives swam with her to another ferry and hoisted her aboard. As they were wrapping that up, another woman, who was on a rescue raft, fell off. So they put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   About 70 passengers were taken to the New Jersey side of the river.

¶   Some looked "smiling and happy to be alive." Others were "a little stunned," said Jeff Welz, director of public safety for the city of Weehawken. "I'm looking at them and saying, `I don't know if I'd look good if I went through what they went through.'"

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill, Deborah Hastings, David Caruso, Jocelyn Noveck, Jennifer Peltz, Marcus Franklin and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.

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Doc: 00066808 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Fri Jan 16 14:47:48 2009

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aD95ODN2O0 01-16-2009 14:10:03   BC-Plane in River-Radio:Source: Pilot reje

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ The US Airways pilot who ditched in the Hudson River considered emergency landings at two airports but twice told air controllers he was unable to make them, then said he'd go into the river instead.

¶   That account was provided by a person briefed on pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger's radio communications after his Airbus A320 apparently struck birds as he climbed to 1,500 feet following takeoff from LaGuardia Airport.

¶   The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, gave this account:

¶   When Sullenberger advised his controller at the New York TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control Center) in Westbury, N.Y., of the "double bird strike," the controller gave him a heading to return to LaGuardia and told him Runway 13 was open. Sullenberger replied: "unable."

¶   By "double bird strike," controllers believed Sullenberger meant that both his jet engines had been damaged by bird impacts.

¶   Then Sullenberger saw an airstrip in the northern New Jersey suburbs, asked what it was and if he could go there. The controller told him it was Teterboro, which is a smaller field that serves mainly commuter and private planes. The controller gave him clearance to make an emergency landing on Teterboro's Runway 1.

¶   But Sullenberger again replied: "unable." It was not immediately clear whether Sullenberger had by then decided he couldn't reach Teterboro or that he wouldn't be able to apply the reverse thrusters on his jets to safely stop the aircraft on the Teterboro runway.

¶   The pilot then advised the controller he was going into the Hudson River. The TRACON notified New York harbor authorities of the imminent ditching.

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Doc: 00064516 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Fri Jan 16 05:10:40 2009

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ The survival of everyone aboard the plane that landed in the Hudson River might seem like a miracle.

¶   But planes are designed to survive water landings, and a skilled crew can use those design elements to keep a ditched aircraft afloat and the passengers safe, according to Bill Waldock, a professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

¶   "You've heard of airworthiness," he said. "Planes are also designed for crashworthiness."

¶   Waldock, who is also a pilot and an aircraft accident investigator, said planes, like ships, will float "as long as you don't let the plane get full of water. It's the buoyancy provided by the air in the plane."

¶   In this case, the plane that went down Thursday was an Airbus 320, which has a low wing. This allowed most of the fuselage to remain above water, contributing to the aircraft's buoyancy, he said.

¶   Waldock said the escape slide that is sometimes used to evacuate passengers from planes on tarmacs can also double as flotation devices for aircraft, as it did Thursday.

¶   But he emphasized the skill displayed by the crew in that operation, starting with the pilot.

¶   "He put the tail in the water and gradually slowed the airplane down as much as possible," Waldock said. "You're still going to get a jolt when it slows down enough, but if you do it right, and let the tail hit first, the tail will absorb some of the energy of the impact and bleed it out."

¶   He said a water landing is by no means intrinsically soft. "If you've ever done a belly flop off a diving board, you know water is as hard as concrete. If you hit it wrong, it's an incompressible force."

¶   After the pilot eased the plane into the river, Waldock said, "the flight attendant side of things came into play. You cannot open the cabin door. If you do, the airplane will sink quickly because it fills with water. Your procedures after a ditching are to use the overwing exits and evacuate the passengers out on the wing."

¶   He added: "Initially people may have been panicked, but the flight attendants got control of the cabin quickly."

¶   Waldock said he could not think of another situation where everyone aboard a large plane that ended up in the water survived.

¶   Other factors he cited were the relatively calm waters of the river, compared to an ocean landing, and the quick response of ferries and other vessels that arrived to remove the passengers.

¶   "This is a tremendously unusual event," he added. "Normally when you put a large transport plane in the water, most of the time they do not have a good outcome."

¶   Other major accidents in which planes ended up in the water included two US Air flights taking off from LaGuardia Airport that ended up in Flushing Bay, one in 1992 in which 27 people died and wing ice was the cause; and another in 1989 in which two people died when the plane ran off the runway.

¶   Boston was also the site of two water accidents involving airplanes. In 1982, a DC 10 slid off a runway into Logan International Airport, killing two, and in 1960, 62 people died when a plane took off from Logan and crashed into the water after starlings damaged the engines. Ten survived.

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¶   The splashdown of a US Airways passenger jet Thursday into the Hudson River in New York without the loss of a single life kept intact a safety streak dating back two years.

¶   No one died on commercial U.S. carriers in either 2007 or 2008, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. During that time, 1.5 billion passengers flew on scheduled domestic airline flights.

¶   The last deaths on a U.S. commercial flight occurred Aug. 27, 2006. Forty-nine people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

¶   ___

¶   Sources: USA Today, National Transportation Safety Board.

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aD95NTB8O0 01-15-2009 19:32:35   BC-Plane in River-Bush:Bush praises Hudson

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ President George W. Bush said he was inspired by the "skill and heroism" of the US Airways crew that flew a crippled jetliner to an emergency landing in New York's Hudson River and avoided any causalities.

¶   Bush also saluted the "dedication and selflessness" of the emergency responders and volunteers who pulled passengers from the chilly river Thursday shortly after the plane took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport.

¶   The pilot guided his jetliner into the river after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines. More than 150 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus A320 were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank.

¶   "Laura (Bush) and I are inspired by the skill and heroism of the flight crew as well as the dedication and selflessness of the emergency responders and volunteers who rescued passengers from the icy waters of the Hudson," Bush said in a statement. "We send our thoughts and prayers to all involved in the accident."

¶   Bush said his administration was coordinating with state and local officials to respond to the crash.

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Doc: 00063222 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 21:16:29 2009

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aD95NURV81 01-15-2009 21:16:29*F BC-Plane in River-More Survivors:Experts:

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ Four recent major airline accidents have something in common: Everyone survived.

¶   It is part of a hard-to-quantify trend of people surviving crashes that used to be fatal, aviation safety experts said Thursday after everybody was rescued from a US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson River.

¶   Part of the reason is luck, but much of it is due to better crew reaction and training and sturdier planes, said experts at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

¶   "What's amazing to me is the last few we've had, everybody's escaped," said Eric Doten, a former Federal Aviation Administration senior official and retired professor of safety at Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach. "We've worked on survivability."

¶   Besides Thursday's harrowing crash in New York, everyone got out of a Continental Airlines jet that skidded off the runway and then caught fire in Denver last month. A year ago, everyone escaped after a British Airways 777 crash-landed short of its runway in London.

¶   And in July, a Qantas jetliner fell nearly 20,000 feet over the South China Sea, when an oxygen tank exploded and ripped a hole in the floor the size of a small car. It made an emergency landing and everyone survived

¶   The United States hasn't had a major airliner fatality for two years straight, part of an overall trend of fewer major airline deaths. The last major U.S. airliner crash with many fatalities was Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

¶   Even with that last fatal accident, fewer than 100 passengers have died in U.S. major airliner accidents in the past seven years combined, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

¶   "It's much more heartening what happened today than unnerving," said MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett, who studies airline fatalities. "The emergencies are becoming rarer and rarer and the observed survival rate given the emergency" are going up.

¶   Everything from manufacturing to maintenance to the crew has improved to make crashes fewer and more survivable, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the airline industry's Air Transport Association.

¶   "And you have seen that bear itself out" in recent accidents, he said.

¶   Seats are stronger and hardware is better, but the key is how the flight attendants and pilots respond, said Bill Waldock, who teaches a course in crash worthiness at Embry-Riddle in Prescott, Ariz.

¶   "People forget flight attendants are on board for one reason _ that's to get people to safety as soon as possible," he said.

¶   A quick evacuation may have prevented fatalities both in New York and Denver, he said. He cited improvements in crew training prompted by major fatal accidents.

¶   "We kind of learned the hard way that it is critical to control what happens" in evacuation, he said.

¶   One reason flight attendants are doing better might be because they are older and more senior than they used to be because few airlines have hired new people since Sept. 11, 2001, said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. As flight attendants get more training each year, "their confidence is easily translated into successful evacuations," she said.

¶   And the pilots in the New York accident not only had the luck for the accident to occur at the right time, but they also had the skill to pull off a good water landing, Waldock said.

¶   Landing in a river instead of the open ocean or the city is "almost the best case" scenario for a "deadstick" landing, Waldock said.

¶   Barnett said: "It has to be one of the most extraordinary water landings in aviation history."

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Doc: 00063750 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 23:33:22 2009

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aD95NULEG1 01-15-2009 21:02:34   BC-Plane In River-Pilot:Hudson River

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ The pilot who guided a crippled US Airways jetliner safely into the Hudson River _ saving all 155 people aboard _ became an instant hero Thursday, with accolades from the mayor and governor and a fan club online.

¶   The pilot of Flight 1549 was Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, of Danville, Calif., an official familiar with the accident told The Associated Press. Sullenberger is a former fighter pilot who runs a safety consulting firm in addition to flying commercial aircraft.

¶   Sullenberger, who has flown for US Airways since 1980, flew F-4 fighter jets with the Air Force in the 1970s. He then served on a board that investigated aircraft accidents and participated later in several National Transportation Safety Board investigations.

¶   Sullenberger had been studying the psychology of keeping airline crews functioning even in the face of crisis, said Robert Bea, a civil engineer who co-founded UC Berkeley's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.

¶   Bea said he could think of few pilots as well-situated to bring the plane down safely than Sullenberger.

¶   "When a plane is getting ready to crash with a lot of people who trust you, it is a test.. Sulley proved the end of the road for that test. He had studied it, he had rehearsed it, he had taken it to his heart."

¶   Sullenberger is president of Safety Reliability Methods, a California firm that uses "the ultra-safe world of commercial aviation" as a basis for safety consulting in other fields, according to the firm's Web site.

¶   Sullenberger's mailbox at the firm was full on Thursday. A group of fans sprang up on Facebook within hours of the emergency landing.

¶   "OMG, I am terrified of flying but I would be happy to be a passenger on one of your aircraft!!" Melanie Wills in Bristol wrote on the wall of "Fans of Sully Sullenberger." "You have saved a lot of peoples lives and are a true hero!!"

¶   The pilot "did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off, and tried to verify that there was nobody else on board, and he assures us there was not."

¶   "He was the last one up the aisle and he made sure that there was nobody behind him."

¶   Gov. David Paterson pronounced it a "miracle on the Hudson."

¶   A woman who answered the phone at Sullenberger's home in Danville hung up on a reporter who asked to speak with the family.

¶   Candace Anderson, a member of the Danville town council who lives a few blocks from Sullenberger, said it was an amazing story and she was proud to live in the same town as the pilot.

¶   "You look at his training, you look at his experience. It was just the right pilot at the right time in charge of that plane that saved so many lives," Anderson said. "He is a man who is calm, cool, collected, just as he was today."

¶   Sullenberger's co-pilot was Jeff Skiles, 49, of Oregon, Wis., a 23-year US Airways veteran.

¶   "He was OK," said his wife, Barbara. "He was relieved that everybody got off."

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Haven Daley in Danville, Calif., Lisa Leff in San Francisco, Colleen Long and researcher Susan James in New York contributed to this report.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ Fred Berretta was just nodding off when the boom jolted him awake.

¶   In seat 22-A, Jeff Kolodjay turned to the window to see flames leaping from the engine, just as the floor seemed to drop out.

¶   One row back, Bill Zuhoski interlocked arms with the passengers seated next to him, as the waters of the Hudson River closed in.

¶   Vallie Collins quickly pressed out a text message to her husband, Steve, back in Tennessee, and hit send: "My plane is crashing."

¶   US Airways Flight 1549 was not even 5 minutes old.

¶   Was this really happening?

¶   Barely an hour before, 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots had boarded the Airbus A320 for what had seemed the most ordinary of journeys, plagued by nothing more than routine frustrations.

¶   First, the Spirit Airways flight that Kolodjay, his father and four buddies were ticketed for was canceled. Now this one, bound for Charlotte, N.C., was running behind.

¶   But Kolodjay, already wearing his checkered golf cap despite the afternoon's 20-degree chill, was looking ahead. By night, he and his friends would be in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where temperatures in the 50s and a few days on the links awaited.

¶   From where he sat, it looked as if the plane was full. A mother holding a 9-month-old baby. Three executives from Wells Fargo, traveling on business.

¶   By 3 p.m., the flight was running about 15 minutes late. But that was certainly typical for New York's tangled LaGuardia Airport. It was nothing Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III _ with 40 years of flying experience _ hadn't seen before. Three minutes later, the flier known as "Sully" pushed back from the gate and pivoted his craft toward the runway. At 3:26, Flight 1549 was airborne.

¶   As the plane climbed over Flushing Bay and the Bronx came into sight 1,800 feet below, passengers began to get comfortable. In his seat on the left side of the plane, Berretta, heading home to Charlotte after a business trip, closed his eyes.

¶   The plane continued its ascent _ 2,800 feet, then 3,200. The apartment towers of Washington Heights quickly slipped below the plane, with the Hudson River and New Jersey ahead.

¶   But up in the cockpit, Sullenberger knew something was wrong. Less than a minute into the flight, he radioed an air traffic controller at New York TRACON, or Terminal Radar Approach Control, in Westbury, N.Y. His plane had suffered a "double bird strike" and would have to return to the airport.

¶   As the controller began routing the aircraft back to LaGuardia, Sullenberger looked down at northern New Jersey and asked the controller about the runway he had spotted below. What was it? That was Teterboro Airport, a strip popular with corporate jets. Sullenberger asked for permission to make an emergency landing.

¶   In the cabin, passengers, too, were certain things had gone wrong. Berretta sat up straight upon hearing a loud boom, and looked out the window. Smoke was billowing from the engine mounted on the wing outside his window.

¶   "There were fire and flames coming out of it and I was looking right at it," Kolodjay said.

¶   The plane banked left, heading due south over the Hudson and losing altitude quickly _ 2,000 feet, 1,600, 1,200, 400.

¶   "Brace for impact!" the pilot barked over the intercom in the cabin.

¶   Berretta leaned forward in prayer. Kolodjay said a Hail Mary.

¶   Moments later, the blue-tailed craft slammed into the water with a jolt.

¶   Sitting in traffic at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 34th Street, construction sales representative Jeremy Maycroft stared west toward the Hudson. Was that a plane?

¶   Inside the cabin of Flight 1549, "it was just controlled chaos," said passenger Dave Sanderson, of Charlotte. "People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way."

¶   "There was a mixed emotion of yelling and crying," passenger Alberto Panero said. "But then a couple people just kind of took charge and calmed everyone."

¶   The gray waters of the Hudson lapped at the windows and began pouring into the cabin.

¶   "For a second, I thought I was just going to die right there in the plane," Zuhoski said. "I was going to drown to death."

¶   He clambered up on top of one of the seats. But less than a minute after the plane hit the water, passengers started moving toward the exits. The mother with the baby, seated near the back, tried to crawl over the seat in front of her. "Women and children first!" some of the male passengers shouted. They made their way out the doors at the front and middle of the plane, and onto the wings.

¶   Panero took a look back down the empty aisle of the plane to make sure there was no one else behind him before jumping into a life boat.

¶   The last to go was Sullenberger, who walked the length of the plane twice to make sure all were out.

¶   Outside, the water was frigid, soaking Kolodjay from the waist down. But help was already at hand, with 14 vessels from the NY Waterway commuter ferry service and the Circle Line sightseeing fleet rushing to the scene.

¶   At the helm of the ferry Thomas Jefferson, Capt. Vincent Lombardi pulled alongside, greeted by cheers. People were spread across the plane's wings. Others were in inflatable rafts. A few people were in the water. You see a lot of things in New York's waters, but who would believe this story?

¶   The ferry passengers grabbed life vests and lines of rope and tossed them to the survivors.

¶   "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying," Lombardi said. "We gave them the jackets off our backs."

¶   One woman had a 3-year-old child, and other passengers on a raft told her to toss the girl to them. She did and then got on the raft herself.

¶   Another lady had a 9-month-old child. They helped her onto the wing and she didn't want to toss the baby to them, but she finally did after people kept encouraging her to do it.

¶   Sanderson said one woman initially refused to get off the plane until she had her luggage, but they eventually persuaded her to get out.

¶   "I felt no fear until I got on the boat," Sanderson said. "I had no balance, I couldn't feel my hands."

¶   Back on shore, the stunned passengers, many wrapped in blankets, walked around and shook each others hands. Some embraced. Nearly all were strangers, but now they shared a unique comradery.

¶   Hours later, Panero marveled to CNN: "All of the sudden, all the strangers we didn't know had a common bond."

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Doc: 00063247 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 21:24:50 2009

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*** Version history. (* = this story, F = final, S = semifinal) ***

aD95NUVSG0 01-15-2009 21:24:50*F BC-Plane in River-Rescue:Response to emerg

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ As the US Airways plane hit the frigid waters of the Hudson River, emergency crews were already headed to the scene. And the swift, dramatic response had an amazing result: All the 155 people aboard were pulled to safety.

¶   Commuter ferries also sprang into action from New York and New Jersey, and their crews encountered freezing, panicked passengers _ some of whom let out cheers when the boats arrived.

¶   "We had to pull an elderly woman out of a raft in a sling. She was crying. ... People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up, hurry up,'" said Vincent Lombardi, captain of the first boat to get to the plane, the Thomas Jefferson. "We gave them the jackets off our backs."

¶   The fire department in New York got the first emergency call at 3:31 p.m. and was on the scene in less than five minutes. NY Waterway ferries shuttling passengers to and from New Jersey deployed within moments.

¶   In total, 14 vessels responded to the scene, with crews trained to respond to people overboard.

¶   Across the river, Weehawken, N.J., police, firefighters and emergency medical crews boarded ferries awaiting rush hour and headed to the plane, minutes after the pilot heroically guided the jet into the water after the engine failed.

¶   The ferries pulled up slowly to avoid washing passengers off the plane with the wake. Some passengers were already standing on the wing as Lombardi came alongside the sinking plane, which was moving swiftly down the river. Other passengers were in inflatable rafts.

¶   Lombardi's crew rescued 56 passengers.

¶   Brittany Catanzaro, captain of the Thomas Kean, pulled 24 people aboard with her crew.

¶   Meanwhile, detectives John McKenna and James Coll _ members of an elite emergency police team _ commandeered a sightseeing ferry at 42nd Street and headed to scene.

¶   As the vessel arrived at the sinking fuselage, Sgt. Michael McGuinness and Detective Sean Mulcahy tied ropes around themselves that were also tied to their colleagues. They stayed on board as McKenna and Coll entered the plane to rescue four other passengers still inside.

¶   Firefighters responded by boat and collected other passengers. They also anchored the plane with ropes to keep it from sinking or drifting away with the current.

¶   High above, divers Michael Delaney and Robert Rodriguez of the New York Police Department dropped from a helicopter into the water. Fom the air, Delaney said, "it all looked very orderly. The plane's crew appeared to do a great job."

¶   Both divers spotted a woman in the water, hanging onto the side of a ferry boat and "frightened out of her mind," Rodriguez said. "She's very lethargic."

¶   "I see panic out of this woman," Rodriguez said. "She's very cold, so she's unable to climb up."

¶   The two pulled another female passenger from the water as other passengers sat calmly on the plane's flotation devices, waiting to board the ferries clustered nearby.

¶   Both divers climbed onto the wing and entered the plane and confirmed everyone was off.

¶   One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries. Fire officials said at least half the people on board were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

¶   Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson heaped praise on the rescue effort.

¶   "They train for these kinds of emergencies, and you saw it in action," Bloomberg said. "Because of their fast brave work, we think that contributed to the fact that it looks like everybody is safe."

¶   Paterson said it was a miracle.

¶   "I think that in simplicity, this is really a potential tragedy that may have become one of the most spectacular days in the history of New York City's agencies," he said.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Marcus Franklin, Samantha Gross and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

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Doc: 00063646 DB: research_d_2009_1 Date: Thu Jan 15 23:07:05 2009

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*** Version history. (* = this story, F = final, S = semifinal) ***

aD95NU6IG0 01-15-2009 20:30:50   BC-Plane in River-Survivors:Passengers in

aD95NVCLO0 01-15-2009 21:52:07   BC-Plane in River-Survivors, 1st Ld-Writet

aD95NVTE80 01-15-2009 22:27:53   BC-Plane in River-Survivors, 2nd Ld-Writet

aD95O0FQ80 01-15-2009 23:07:05*F BC-Plane in River-Survivors, 3rd Ld-Writet

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ Shock, relief, gratitude. Most of all, the soaked and freezing passengers of Flight 1549 just seemed amazed to be alive.

¶   All of them.

¶   "You've got to give it to the pilot," said Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., who was aboard the US Airways jet that ditched in the frigid Hudson River after an apparent collision with a flock of birds. "He made a hell of a landing."

¶   "He was phenomenal," echoed Joe Hart, of Long Island, a salesman with investment firm ING.

¶   "He landed it _ I tell you what _ the impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end (collision). It threw you into the seat ahead of you. Both engines cut out, and he actually floated it into the river," he added.

¶   Hart said he waited out on the wing of the plane, with others, as the water level rose from his knee to his waist.

¶   "Most of the panic occurred while we were out on the wings or in the water, and the ferry boats were coming." But, he added, "I couldn't believe how fast they showed up. They were right there to pick us up."

¶   "I knew I was safe," he said. "The big guy upstairs didn't want me." Later, Hart had recovered enough to send a humorous text message to an Associated Press reporter: "I'm certain this will get me an upgrade on my next flight!"

¶   Soon after the plane took off from LaGuardia Airport for Charlotte, N.C., passenger Albert Panero felt "an impact and some sort of loud noise." He started smelling smoke. "Everybody could tell that something was kind of going on, it wasn't just turbulence or something like that."

¶   Soon, Panero said on WABC-TV, "I knew that we were going down."

¶   "You think of all the things that are about to happen," he said. "I thought, 'I guess this is it. I guess I'm going to die.' I turned my phone back on because it's got GPS. I figured if anything happened, they could find me _ or find whatever's left."

¶   But then, the plane hit the water, and Panero was surprised that no huge explosion ensued. "I looked outside, and you could just see the water start creeping up pretty quick," he said. "So that's when I said, 'OK, we gotta get out of here.'"

¶   At first, there was "a mixed emotion of yelling and crying," Panero said. But it didn't last. "A couple people just kind of took charge and calmed everyone. Everyone got to the exits, and whoever was there just opened them up."

¶   Most of all, Panero was grateful to the pilot. "I can't believe he managed to land that plane," he marveled.

¶   Dave Sanderson, 47, of Charlotte, who works for Oracle Corp., was headed home after a business trip. The married father of four was in seat 15A, on the left side of the plane.

¶   "I heard an explosion, and I saw flames coming from the left wing and I thought, 'This isn't good,'" he said. "Then it was just controlled chaos. People started running up the aisle. People were getting shoved out of the way."

¶   Kolodjay, 31, who had been headed to a golfing trip in Myrtle Beach, S.C., said he noticed a jolt and felt the plane drop. He looked out the left side of the jet and could see one of the engines on fire.

¶   "Then the captain said, 'Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. "It was intense." He said some passengers started praying. He said a few Hail Marys.

¶   "It was bad, man," Kolodjay said. But he and others spoke of a sense of calm and purpose that quickly descended on the passengers and crew as the plane started filling with water and rescue boats swarmed to the scene. They decided women and children would be evacuated first.

¶   "Then the rest of us got out," he said.

¶   Passenger Fred Berretta, who lives in Charlotte, was on his way home from a business trip. He had one message for the pilot and co-pilot: "Thank you, thank you, thank you," he said.

¶   After the impact, dozens of shivering passengers wrapped in white blankets evacuated aboard rescue boats.

¶   "Their feet and legs were wet." said Dario Gongora, 60, a supervisor on the Circle Line ferry service, which offers sightseeing rides around Manhattan. "It looked like they were in shock."

¶   Kolodjay was unhurt, but some other survivors were taken to hospitals for treatment of hypothermia or other injuries. It was not immediately clear how many required treatment.

¶   Police scuba divers arrived at the scene to see a woman in her late 30s or early 40s in the water, hanging onto the side of a ferry boat.

¶   She was "frightened out of her mind," suffering from hypothermia and unable to climb out of the water, said Detective Robert Rodriguez of the New York Police Department.

¶   The detectives swam with her to another ferry and hoisted her aboard. As they were wrapping that up, another woman, who was on a rescue raft, fell off. So they put her on a Coast Guard boat.

¶   About 70 passengers were taken to the New Jersey side of the river.

¶   Some looked "smiling and happy to be alive." Others were "a little stunned," said Jeff Welz, director of public safety for the city of Weehawken. "I'm looking at them and saying, 'I don't know if I'd look good if I went through what they went through.'"

¶   He said the injuries included hypothermia _ the water was 42 degrees or less _ and bruises. None appeared life-threatening.

¶   Emergency medical service worker Helen Rodriguez was one of the first rescuers on the scene.

¶   She saw stunned, soaking passengers, saying "I can't believe I'm alive." The worst injury she saw was a woman with two broken legs.

¶   At St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, the feeling was the same.

¶   "The few I talked with know how lucky they were," said emergency room Dr. Gabriel Wilson.

¶   Eight survivors were in good condition there, while two were still being evaluated, including a female crew member with a possible bone fracture, Wilson said.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill, Deborah Hastings, David Caruso, Jocelyn Noveck, Jennifer Peltz and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.

Mayor PMer:

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ Minutes after a US Airways jet plunged into the icy Hudson River, Vincent Lucante and his ferry crew leaned over to pluck two soaked and shivering babies from an emergency life raft floating near the plane's right wing.

¶   The women holding the babies calmly handed the infant and toddler up to their rescuers, who took the children to the warmest area of the ferry and sought to warm them with blankets and the jackets off their backs.

¶   "They started to cry, which is the best sound that we could hear, and everybody had smiles," Lucante said.

¶   The New York Waterways port captain recounted his story of rescuing the plane's youngest passengers during a City Hall ceremony on Friday where civilian and uniformed rescuers were honored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

¶   That company's ferries were among the first on scene of the Thursday afternoon disaster, and are credited with beginning the miraculous rescue that whisked all 155 passengers and crew to safety.

¶   "This is a story of heroes, something straight out of a movie script," Bloomberg said. "But if it had been a movie, people probably wouldn't have believed it, it was too good to be true _ the perfect landing, the phenomenal response, the rescue of every single person."

¶   Bloomberg handed out certificates to about 25 people who helped with the rescue, and said he was saving a key to the city for the pilot of the plane, who was not able to attend because he was still helping with the investigation.

¶   "His brave actions have inspired millions of people in this city and millions more around the world," Bloomberg said.

¶   After the pilot landed the plane in the Hudson River, the reaction was quick.

¶   Following the ferry boats _ the first to arrive _ the Fire Department of New York's marine 1 crew arrived within seven minutes and police were there in four, officials said.

¶   New York Police Department divers told of finding a distressed woman clinging to the side of a ferry boat.

¶   EMTs described how the frigid water and 20-degree air stepped up the race against time to get everyone out alive.

¶   "If we weren't there in another few minutes and got them on board and got them warm, they could have died," said Emergency Medical Services Chief John Peruggia.

¶   Vincent Lombardi, another New York Waterways captain, said when his ferry pulled up, some passengers were cheering, others were crying.

¶   All of the rescuers at the City Hall ceremony said the overall mood was mostly calm and orderly, with very little chaos or panic.

¶   Some said "'Get me out of the water, please, I'm cold,'" Lombardi recalled.

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ Less than minute after a normal takeoff, the US Airways pilot probably heard and felt the thumps. He hastily radioed his air controller "double bird strike" and asked to return to LaGuardia airport. As he turned back, he saw an airstrip beneath him and got emergency clearance to land there in northern New Jersey instead. He never made it.

¶   The controller's clearance for an emergency landing at Teterboro Airport, a suburban field used primarily by commuter and private aircraft, was the last radio communication between the Airbus A320 and controllers. So there was no immediate explanation for how and why the pilot changed his mind again and managed to ditch the plane in the Hudson River without any fatalities among the more than 150 people aboard.

¶   "There was no `mayday' or emergency distress signal from the plane's transponder during the entire episode, which lasted about five or six minutes," according to Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

¶   Church provided this reconstruction of the pilot-controller conversation after speaking with employees at the New York TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control Center) in Westbury, N.Y., which was handling the aircraft after its takeoff from LaGuardia's Runway 4.

¶   The LaGuardia tower controller had already handed the jetliner off to the controller at the TRACON, which handles aircraft after liftoff until they get about 40 miles out or 10,000 to 12,000 feet up. The TRACON controller ordered the A320 to climb to 1,500 feet and turn left.

¶   About 30 to 45 seconds after the takeoff, as he climbed to the assigned altitude, the pilot reported the bird strikes and asked to go back to LaGuardia right away. Church said the pilot apparently meant that birds had hit both of the plane's jet engines.

¶   The controller gave him the heading for a return to LaGuardia and told him Runway 13 was available for him to land there.

¶   As the pilot began to follow those orders over northern New Jersey, he looked down, saw an airstrip and asked, "What airport is that?"

¶   The controller replied: "That's Teterboro."

¶   The pilot said he wanted to land there.

¶   The controller then gave instructions to divert the aircraft to Teterboro's Runway 1 for an emergency landing.

¶   And that was the last radio contact between the controller and pilot. Church estimated by that point the aircraft might have reached about 5,000 feet.

¶   Despite the lack of a mayday call, controllers handled the situation as an emergency, Church said.

¶   Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. EST. The plane took off on Runway 4, made a left turn and crashed roughly three minutes later, Brown said.

¶   "We understand that there were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She said the left turn is the "the normal takeoff procedure from that runway. ... They were in a normal configuration."

¶   "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident," Brown said.

¶   The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of 20 investigators to New York to look into the crash. Board spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said the on-scene segment of crash investigations usually takes five to seven days.

¶   ___

¶   Associated Press writers Joan Lowy and Gillan Gaynair contributed to this report.

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¶   NEW YORK (AP) _ In 21 years as a flight attendant, Candace Kolander has noticed an interesting phenomenon: Right after any type of airplane accident _ not that it happens very often, she's quick to point out _ "the passengers tend to pay a lot more attention to me when I do my safety demo."

¶   The attention doesn't last beyond a few days or weeks, but it's an understandable reaction, given how little attention people usually pay to the safety instructions that must, by law, be given before takeoff on every flight.

¶   Kolander, who most recently flew for the now defunct Aloha Airlines, made her comments a few hours after a US Airways plane ended up in the Hudson River and everyone on board was safely pulled into boats. The plane was headed from LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte, N.C., and the pilot was able to warn passengers to brace for impact.

¶   The cause of Thursday's accident is under investigation but the plane may have been disabled by a collision with birds.

¶   Alison Duquette, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, credited the pilots and three flight attendants for their "fast work" and added: "All I can say is that the emergency training done by the pilots and flight attendants and the emergency evacuation procedures seemed to have worked."

¶   Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, which is a union, said the typical lack of interest among passengers in the safety demo is "frustrating," adding that when passengers pay attention they're more prepared on what to do.

¶   Most passengers have probably heard the safety drill enough times to know that life vests should not be inflated inside the aircraft. They are bulky and could impair your ability to exit. Photos and video of Thursday's evacuation showed some passengers donning the yellow vests after they emerged from the aircraft; others appeared not be wearing them. When commuter ferries came to their rescue, some of the passengers were standing on the wing and others were in inflatable rafts.

¶   Aviation life vests are designed to be easy to use. Although different brands are used on different aircraft, Kolander said they typically "slip over your head, you pull the straps down and clip them in front, then pull and they inflate."

¶   Caldwell noted that flight attendants receive extensive training for planned and unplanned water landings and are tested yearly.

¶   Christopher Elliott, ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine, noted that "no one ever pays attention to the instructions. I was just on a flight from Orlando to Toronto and no one even bothered to look up during the in-flight safety announcements. I think I was the only one who bothered to review the instructions in the seatback."

¶   After Thursday's rescue, he said, "in the short term, a few passengers will perk up during the announcement. But long term, no."

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¶   WASHINGTON (AP) _ Four recent major airline accidents have something in common: Everyone survived.

¶   It is part of a hard-to-quantify trend of people surviving crashes that used to be fatal, aviation safety experts said Thursday after everybody was rescued from a US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson River.

¶   Part of the reason is luck, but much of it is due to better crew reaction and training and sturdier planes, said experts at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

¶   "What's amazing to me is the last few we've had, everybody's escaped," said Eric Doten, a former Federal Aviation Administration senior official and retired professor of safety at Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach. "We've worked on survivability."

¶   Besides Thursday's harrowing crash in New York, everyone got out of a Continental Airlines jet that skidded off the runway and then caught fire in Denver last month. A year ago, everyone escaped after a British Airways 777 crash-landed short of its runway in London.

¶   And in July, a Qantas jetliner fell nearly 20,000 feet over the South China Sea, when an oxygen tank exploded and ripped a hole in the floor the size of a small car. It made an emergency landing and everyone survived

¶   The United States hasn't had a major airliner fatality for two years straight, part of an overall trend of fewer major airline deaths. The last major U.S. airliner crash with many fatalities was Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

¶   Even with that last fatal accident, fewer than 100 passengers have died in U.S. major airliner accidents in the past seven years combined, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

¶   "It's much more heartening what happened today than unnerving," said MIT statistics professor Arnold Barnett, who studies airline fatalities. "The emergencies are becoming rarer and rarer and the observed survival rate given the emergency" are going up.

¶   Everything from manufacturing to maintenance to the crew has improved to make crashes fewer and more survivable, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the airline industry's Air Transport Association.

¶   "And you have seen that bear itself out" in recent accidents, he said.

¶   Seats are stronger and hardware is better, but the key is how the flight attendants and pilots respond, said Bill Waldock, who teaches a course in crash worthiness at Embry-Riddle in Prescott, Ariz.

¶   "People forget flight attendants are on board for one reason _ that's to get people to safety as soon as possible," he said.

¶   A quick evacuation may have prevented fatalities both in New York and Denver, he said. He cited improvements in crew training prompted by major fatal accidents.

¶   "We kind of learned the hard way that it is critical to control what happens" in evacuation, he said.

¶   One reason flight attendants are doing better might be because they are older and more senior than they used to be because few airlines have hired new people since Sept. 11, 2001, said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants. As flight attendants get more training each year, "their confidence is easily translated into successful evacuations," she said.

¶   And the pilots in the New York accident not only had the luck for the accident to occur at the right time, but they also had the skill to pull off a good water landing, Waldock said.

¶   Landing in a river instead of the open ocean or the city is "almost the best case" scenario for a "deadstick" landing, Waldock said.

¶   Barnett said: "It has to be one of the most extraordinary water landings in aviation history."

Our coverage of the Hudson plane splashdown also included this interactive:

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/ny_plane_crash/