USAir 1549 "Miracle on the Hudson" Flight Reconstruction

[Broomstick]

I came across this rather amazing flight animation on YouTube. It's a reconstruction of the airline flight that wound up in the Hudson River with everyone surviving the ditching. In addition to reconstructing the flight, you also hear the tower/airplane communications, and see what the captain and first officer are saying to each other.

Some things to note:

There's quite a bit of radio chatter prior to the emergency, a fairly normal level and speed of communication. Afterwards, things get a lot quieter and a lot more focused. There are some point where, after Sullenberg makes an announcement to the tower, you get moments of silence. Also note that even while the tower is halting departures and trying to help the pilot find a runway the traffic controller still has to take to some other airplanes and direct traffic. Multi-tasking!

Note the change in dynamic from the pilots following ATC directives to the pilots running the show after the announcement of an emergency, including ATC asking "what do you need?", basically giving the pilots carte blanche to request anything.

After the engine loss, the captain says "My aircraft" and the co-pilot says "Your aircraft". This is something I learned my first flight lesson as a means to clarify who is in charge of the airplane, and it extends all the way to the top of aviation. Subsequent to that, the co-pilot is trying to re-start engines and do other stuff, but it's the captain who is controlling the flying part.

ATC announces that they've dropped off radar contact prior to the actual landing. What happened is that they dropped below the level of radar coverage, probably because they're in the radar "shadow" cast by large buildings in the area. Note that the controller did not assume they had crashed at that point - he knows why they dropped off radar and that they are almost certainly still flying at that point, which is why he's still suggesting alternate airports to them.

There are points where the pilots do not respond to ATC radio. That is because they are busy flying the airplane. That is perfectly OK to do in an emergency, as is the response by another person (probably another pilot) saying "He said he was going in the Hudson" as it is directly related to the emergency at hand.

The point where the captain asks the co-pilot if he has any more ideas on how to cope with this situation and the co-pilot says "actually, not".

If anyone has question I'll do my best to answer them. Airliners aren't my area of expertise, but I'll do my best.

[FSTargetDrone]

Great find! You get a real sense of how quickly it happened.

[LadyTevar]

Holy shit... the birds were just out of NoWhere!

[phongn]

Holy shit... the birds were just out of NoWhere!

Not quite - radar had been tracking them for some time but that data apparently tends to get filtered out to reduce noise on radar screens. See this composite video.