See full-size image at LGFIf you are as curious as I am about how that US Airways‘ Flight 1549 pilot, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, was able to make a turn and glide to a splashdown landing in the Hudson River, check out this airliners.net discussion: How Long Does A Jet Glide With No Power?

Who knew? I always thought that jet airliners would drop like a stone without motive power. The caveat is that to maintain the airspeed required for maintaining lift, thereby allowing the bird to continue flying, requires that you exchange altitude for continuing that airspeed. Courtesy of today’s LA Times comes this map/chart of the fated flight. Note, the pilot only had 3,200 ft. of altitude to work with, and lots of skyscraper-dense Manhattan to miss.

• No buildings hit: check!
• No bridges hit: check!
• Perfect water crash landing: check!
• No one killed: check!

Not impossible, obviously. Highly improbable, definitely.

The only word that comes readily to mind is:

Miracle.

Technorati Tags: US Airways, Flight 1549, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Cafe Okie, Focus On Politics, Human Persistance, Just Too Cool!, Real Heros. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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