Of course, the hope of future utility is why we investigate these sorts of accidents.WASHINGTON For months, the images of US Airways Flight 1549 gliding into the Hudson River for an emergency landing, and its passengers assembling on the wings of the airplane awaiting rescue from ferry boats, suggested an amazingly calm ending to a potentially deadly situation.
Billy Campbell, a passenger on US Airways flight 1549, spoke during a National Transportation Safety Board hearing on Tuesday.
But a jarringly different image of the plane’s splashdown emerged Tuesday on the first of three days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings on the crash. When the plane hit the water, one passenger in a back row recalled, the impact was “violent,” and as it turned out, tore apart the rear bulkhead and sent water flowing into the aircraft.
“When it finally came to a stop, I was feeling the miracle of, ‘Wow, we survived this crash,’ and then immediately water was rushing in through my window,” said the passenger, Billy Campbell, 49, who had been in Seat 25A, in the second-to-last row of the plane. “My concern was that the plane was going to sink and we were going to be stuck in the back.”
The drama of Flight 1549, including how Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III guided the plane to safety after geese knocked out both engines, was the focus of congressional hearings in February. But this week’s hearings are the first for the body that monitors airline safety.
The witness testimonies from Captain Sullenberger and Mr. Campbell, which detailed how all 150 passengers and 5 crew members were able to escape despite not having enough life rafts, along with newly released cockpit recordings and analysis of bird strikes, offered the most complete picture yet of the dangers aircraft face, and how the industry can better prepare for such rare emergency circumstances.
The rather understated comment should be translated "Most of the time when a big plane ditches everybody dies - we want to know what's different here that let everyone live."Captain Sullenberger was the first witness to testify, recounting what happened in the now famous flight of 5 minutes 8 seconds, and his split-second thought when he realized he could not turn the plane to land at a nearby airport.
“The only option remaining in the metropolitan area that was long enough, wide enough and smooth enough to land was the Hudson River,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to be wrong.”
Robert L. Sumwalt, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, moderated the hearings and said the committee was fortunate to be able to speak to the pilot and passenger witnesses. “This event turned out differently than a lot of the situations the board has looked at,” Mr. Sumwalt said, addressing Captain Sullenberger. “What made the critical difference in this event? How did this event turn out so well?”
Probably one of the few times the rear of the airplane is not the safest place on board.The captain responded: “I don’t think it was one thing, it was many things. We had a highly experienced, well-trained crew. The first officer, Jeffrey Skiles, and I worked together well as a team and we solved each problem as it presented itself to us.”
In harrowing detail, the passenger, Mr. Campbell, the chief executive of a motion picture equipment company who had taken this same flight from New York to Charlotte hundreds of times, described his perspective of the problems, from the bird strike to the water rescue.
Sitting on the left side of the plane, Mr. Campbell described the left engine as “almost a bonfire,” and said that he felt the airplane decelerate and then shudder and emit a smell of jet fuel. He recalled that the flight attendant, Doreen Welsh, reassured the passengers that everything would be fine.
As Captain Sullenberger guided the plane over the Hudson and lifted the nose high to follow the procedures recommended by Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, the passengers in the back of the plane bore the brunt of the impact.
Hmmm... maybe we should start including a sharp blade with those rafts....Mr. Campbell immediately looked out his window and it seemed as if he were peering out the portal of a cruise ship; the plane was partly submerged in the back. As Mr. Campbell made his way to the back of the plane, and with the water quickly creeping up his legs, he discovered that the door could not be opened.
In fact, a passenger had tried in vain to open it by rushing past Ms. Welsh. Ms. Welsh was forcefully shouting to Mr. Campbell and other passengers that they could not go out the back and directed them to the front of the plane.
The aisle was jammed with passengers, so Mr. Campbell, a former athlete, started climbing row by row, falling with each seat hurdle into water that had then reached eye level. He got to the exit over the left wing, only to find it full of passengers.
By the time Captain Sullenberger beckoned him to climb into a forward life raft, Mr. Campbell was the last passenger out the door. The captain and the first officer, Jeffrey B. Skiles, then joined the passengers in the boat, and a minute of stunned silence later, Mr. Campbell grabbed Captain Sullenberger by the arm.
“Thank you, you saved my life,” he recalled telling the captain. “You saved all of our lives.”
Even then, as in Tuesday’s testimony, Captain Sullenberger was humble and matter-of-fact when he responded, “You’re welcome.”
But although all were on the lifeboat, the danger was still not over, Mr. Campbell recalled. The raft was still tethered to the plane, sinking into the freezing river — and no one had a knife to cut it free. It was not for three or four more minutes, Mr. Campbell said, that someone from an approaching ferry boat tossed them a knife.
He credited the quick thinking of the flight attendants, too, in getting everyone off the plane safely. “There were 14 or 15 miracles that had to occur,” Mr. Campbell said.
Documents released in conjunction with the hearings showed the technical side of those miracles. Flight 1549’s entry into the water came at a descent speed nearly 10 feet per second faster than the requirements needed for certification from European and American regulators.
Therefore, the plane hit the water twice as hard as the design assumes. And coming down with almost all its fuel on board, it weighed about 150,000 pounds, roughly three tons more than assumed in the design. According to Airbus, the descent speed of the airplane caused the "disintegration" of some metal panels at the back of the plane.
But the company argued that "the overall behavior of the fuselage structure was excellent” because it did not break up on impact and it maintained "a safe, protective environment for the passengers."
Consider that - it came down faster and harder than design requirements allowed for. That's important information for the future, both for any future ditchings and for future airplane designs. It might even affect current designs through retrofitting. For example, after Turkish Airline Flight 98 in 1974 which, until this month, was considered France's worst aviation accident (it happened over French territory) not only required that all DC-10 cabin floors be reinforced and mechanisms created to equalize pressure in different parts of the airplane in the event of explosive decompression, but similar changes were mandated for the Lockheed L-1011 and Boeing 747.
Since the accident, Captain Sullenberger, 58, a gray-haired man with nearly 30 years of experience at the airline, has become the symbol of stoic calm and courage, the author of miracles. Even Mr. Sumwalt praised his ability not to choke under pressure, especially after the plane first hit the birds.
“If you think I wasn’t startled,” Captain Sullenberger said, “you misunderstand.”
The captain’s communication with the air traffic control tower was released by the Federal Aviation Administration weeks ago, but the cockpit recordings were released only on Tuesday, and those showed that Captain Sullenberger did, in fact, exhibit quite human emotions before and during the flight.
The beginning of the transcript relates Mr. Sullenberger’s frustration with the plane’s bulletproof cockpit door, which was apparently sticky. Captain Sullenberger complained soon after the recording began, “Oh, that # door again.” (The transcript uses the “#” sign to denote expletives.)
“What’s wrong?” asked the first officer, Mr. Skiles.
“Have to slam it pretty hard,” Captain Sullenberger said.
The next, real, problem occurred at 2,700 feet, within 1 minute 37 seconds after takeoff, when the A320 Airbus, struck Canada geese at 2,700 feet.
Smithsonian researchers have confirmed that at least three individual geese were involved in the collision.
It was then when Captain Sullenberger told the air traffic controller that “we lost thrust in both engines.”
He immediately initiated a checklist for restarting the engines, an action, though, designed for this Airbus A320 plane to take place at much higher altitudes. Ultimately, he was forced a few minutes later to issue the now familiar calm, clipped words signaling that he was ditching the plane in the river: “We’re going to be in the Hudson.”
At the end of the flight, just 22 seconds before impact, Captain Sullenberger turned to Mr. Skiles and said, “Got any ideas?”
I think they call that "crew resource management". In a crisis it's very important to seek all sources of information and options.
Upon splashdown, Captain Sullenberger recalled in his testimony that he again turned to Mr. Skiles and said, with his first officer in complete agreement: “That wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
My evil side imagined a continuation of that sentence "...because we're still alive and my underwear isn't full of brown" but like I said, it's my evil side.
The hearings spent time discussing how much training pilots have in the event of a ditching. Captain Sullenberger said that with no simulation training for a water ditching, he used his experience of more than 40 years of flying and common sense to derive a successful outcome.
Captain Sullenberger, a former Air Force pilot, said that he knew the Hudson would be the best — and only — option because he recalled noticing the heavy boat traffic on the river during an off-day visit to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
When Captain Sullenberger had spoken to the 150 passengers awaiting takeoff on the La Guardia runway on the afternoon of Jan. 15, he remarked what a nice day it was to fly. And soon after they took off, he remarked to his co-pilot, Mr. Skiles, “What a view of the Hudson today.”
Those words would prove to be prophetic.
Yes, situational awareness is very important.
But consider - although significantly damaged, the Airbus that hit the Hudson performed beyond certification requirements. That sort of situation is, of course, partly a result of the tendency in aviation to exceed strength and durability requirements, and a reason for that tendency. Now consider - Air France 447 is an Airbus that is believed to have been torn apart in mid-air by the forces it was subjected to. A truly frightening and massive amount of force had to have been applied to that aircraft in order for that to happen. One of the reasons (many reasons) for attempting to recover the black boxes for that flight despite the great expense is that Flight 447 represents a "forbidden experiment" - in real world conditions what really is required to destroy an Airbus? We are quite sure they'll perform up to requirements, and somewhat beyond, but no one really know how far beyond until after an accident which, needless to say, would be totally unethical to conduct as an experiment.
As a bit of an update - it seems not just Air France but several other airlines are swapping out the pitot tubes on their Airbuses. It is not confirmed by any means that a fault with those devices contributed or caused the Flight 447 crash but it seems no one wants to take that chance, and the upgrade was scheduled in any case, this just speeds it up.
Also, the tail of the Flight 447 Airbus has been located and retrieved. The black boxes apparently were not attached to that particular piece, but it does help narrow the search field for the black boxes which, presumably, would have entered the water near that piece.
