Miracle on the Hudson Video of Plane Decending

Whilst I'm sure you've probably had plenty of opportunity to see the video, filmed by the Coast Guard, of US Airways passenger plane, flight 1549, descending into the Hudson river I thought I'd post it here anyway along with my thoughts.

Video of US Airways descent into Hudson River released

Posted by USCGImagery

Personally I watched this video because I was hoping to see how the plane managed to land on the water without spinning out of control.

In all the reporting on this event pilots everywhere seem to have universally agreed that landing a plane of this size safely on water is one step removed from impossible. (One step removed NOW because this pilot has shown its not completely impossible).

I was interested to see the landing just to satisfy my curiosity of how the pilot achieved it - especially considering he had no power, only gliding capability.

Did he need to keep the nose of the plane up? Did he have to use the engines, located below the the wings, as skis to slow the plane down so as to prevent a flip? Did he just keep the plane as level as possible and hope for the best?

Unfortunately, in the above video, whilst you can see the plane coming down at around the two minute mark (from the left of screen) it's too far away to be anything clearer than a white streak.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that everyone made it out of this emergency landing safely but that side of the story is fairly well covered in the media. Just like the world's greatest magic trick (whatever that is), when someone achieves the seemingly impossible, most people would love to know how it's done.

In pilot circles, this pilot achieved the impossible.

It amazes me that, in a city like New York, where the War on Terror began, there weren't more cameras pointed at the Hudson. In a world where seemingly every second person has a digital video camera enabled mobile phone no one was in the right place at the right time and thought, "I'll never see something like this again - I'd better get my camera".

I know it all happened very quickly but still, I've seen planes coming into land. You know when a plane is flying too low for it to be normal. There is time to fire up a camera. People managed it on September 11, 2001 right?

Perhaps an actual video will surface at some point but until then the video below is the closest I've found. It suggests the pilot probably dragged the tail to slow the planes momentum:

US Airways crash Miracle on the Hudson River (Simulation)

Posted by 1DLflyer