University Place

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So I got quite a story to tell you this evening. In the cockpit, you're seeing Sully and I conducting our pre-start checklist. We check, you know, every switch, load every computer, check every system. We close the door, push back, and start up our engines. It just happened to be my leg to fly. At 3,000 feet in the air, which isn't very high at all, I remember something caught my eye. And I look slightly above us and to the right and I see a line of birds, too close to maneuver around. In fact, traveling at that speed, by the time you see a bird, it's really too late to do anything about it. And that fast, we're on top of them. Their bodies were impacting on the wings, on the fuselage. And at least two of them went through the core of each engine. We heard the birds impact the airplane, and I remember thinking, "We have to assess what the damage was." And then after about a second, both engines immediately cut power. You could just feel the airplane sag in the air. I'm pushing the nose forward to try to keep the airplane flying, and Sully decides to take over actually flying the aircraft at this point, which is his prerogative as the captain, and he says, "My aircraft." And I said, "Hey..."

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"Your aircraft."

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But this is actually a signal. My role immediately changed to that of a troubleshooter. And I reached for what we call our quick-reference handbook, which is a 177-page...

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book of emergency procedures and data. And I'm looking for the Dual Engine Failure checklist.

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When I find it, it's three pages long. It's designed to be done at 30,000 feet in the air, not at 3,000 feet in three minutes time. Really, our only option was to land the airplane in the Hudson River. Now, what I remember most about that descent was all the noise in the cockpit. We have all manner of aural alerts that warn us of various things. And a number of them are going off simultaneously. Through all this noise, Sully had the presence of mind to reach back and grab the public address telephone, and says, "This is the captain. Brace for impact." Now with this, the passengers know that they're not going to be returning to an airport to land. And, you know, they handled it in a number of ways. A large number of them texted loved ones on the phones that were supposed to be shut down...

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when they left the gate. One passenger showed me his text. It said, "The plane's going down. "I'll always love you. Say goodbye to the kids." Up in the cockpit, we're coming down through about a thousand feet in the air. We're not going to be able to get the engines started. I started calling out air speed and altitudes to Sully to give him situational awareness. One of the very fortunate things was that the river ahead of us was clear. For anybody who's ever been in New York, it's a very heavily trafficked waterway. We hit hard on the tail. And then, the water just seemed to flow over the windshield. It seemed like it was burying the nose of the airplane, you know, into the river. But then it popped up, and it was just bobbing in the waves. The people got off the airplane relatively fast. They were enthusiastic about...

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getting off that airplane. Now all this actually only took place maybe just a couple hundred yards from shore on the Manhattan side. So it really didn't take us long before we were at the ferry dock and filing off the boat. We weren't at the ferry dock long before the politicians arrived.

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But this is where Governor Paterson coined the phrase "the miracle on the Hudson." But the question is, was it really a miracle? Sully and I had a role, but so did Donna, Doreen, and Sheila, our flight attendants. As did our 150 passengers who were perfect through this, through this incident. There was no pushing. There was no shoving. They helped each other every step of the way. The boat crews there instantly came to our aid and all of the first responders both out on the water and at the ferry dock. That is what made this incident successful. So, maybe it was a miracle. I don't know. Because so many people had to do their jobs flawlessly to reach this outcome. That's my story of "the miracle on the Hudson" today. Thank you for allowing me to share it with you.

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