Panel explores safety issues in Hudson ditching
WASHINGTON — When US Airways Flight 1549 splashed into the Hudson River in January, the fuselage ruptured, sending water gushing into the cabin, and there didn’t appear to be enough room in the available life rafts for all the passengers and crew.
Those were among the issues the National Transportation Safety Board took up Wednesday in the second of a three-day hearing on safety concerns that have arisen from the accident.
On Tuesday, the board released a transcript of the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and heard testimony from the flight’s captain, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. The Airbus A320 struck a flock of Canada geese shortly after taking off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Jan. 15 and lost thrust in both engines. Sullenberger told the board he didn’t try to return to LaGuardia because he thought, “I cannot afford to be wrong.”
“I had to make sure I could make it before I chose that option,” he said. Instead of risking a crash in a densely populated area, he glided the plane into a landing near Manhattan’s ferry terminals, to increase the chances of rescue. All 155 aboard managed to escape the sinking craft.
The transcript shows that in the last 21 seconds of the flight — with cockpit warning systems blaring “terrain, terrain” and “pull up, pull up” — Sullenberger turned to co-pilot Jeff Skiles.
“Got any ideas?” he asked.
“Actually not,” Skiles replied.
Experts on bird-plane collisions told the board that LaGuardia has significantly reduced bird strikes on or near the airport in recent years, partly by killing geese on nearby Riker’s Island.
However, there was nothing the airport could have done to prevent the collision that brought down Flight 1549, witnesses said. The airliner was climbing at about 2,800 feet and was nearly five miles away from the airport when it struck the birds. Airports don’t have much ability to control birds and other wildlife beyond their property boundaries, they said.
Board member Robert Sumwalt suggested the answer may lie in equipping planes with some kind of device that repels or warns away birds.
Witnesses said researchers are trying learn more about bird eyesight and whether pulsating lights might attract their attention and warn them of a plane’s approach. Another idea discussed was whether birds might be repelled by weather radar.
“Birds are not suicidal,” said Richard Dolbeer, an Agriculture Department science adviser and expert on bird-plane collisions. “I have watched this many times — they try to avoid aircraft, but they just don’t see them soon enough.”
(This version CORRECTS UPDATES with start of hearing; SUBS graf 7 to correct to ‘actually not’ sted ‘not really’. Moving on general news and financial services.)
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