US Airways plane to NC crashes into Hudson River
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A US Airways pilot ditched his disabled jetliner into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a collision with a flock of birds apparently knocked out both engines, but rescuers pulled all 155 people on board into boats as the plane sank, authorities say.
There were no immediate reports of any serious injuries.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., when the crash occurred in the river near 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.
The plane, an Airbus 320, took off at 3:26 p.m. and went down minutes later, Brown said.
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"There were eyewitness reports the plane may have flown into a flock of birds," Brown said. She added, "Right now we don't have any indication this was anything other than an accident."
Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said that the pilot reported a "double bird strike" about 30 to 45 seconds after takeoff and said he needed to return to LaGuardia.
The controller instructed the pilot to divert to an airport in Teterboro, N.J., for an emergency landing, Church said.
The plane was submerged in the icy waters up to the windows when rescuers in Coast Guard vessels and ferry boats arrived, opened the door and pulled passengers in yellow life vests from the aircraft, whose fuselage appeared intact. The plane was sinking in the near-freezing water on one of the coldest days of the year, with the mercury around 20 degrees.
Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down.
"I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it's landing right in the water," said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television newsmagazine "Inside Edition." "This looked like a controlled descent."
Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, saw the plane go down from the news organization's high-rise office. "I just thought, 'Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," she said.
US Airways CEO Doug Parker confirmed that 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board the jetliner.
Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said it is not unusual for birds to strike planes. In fact, he said, when planes get ready to take off, if there are birds in the area, the tower will alert the crew.
"They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," Mazzone said.
Twenty-seven years ago this week, an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River after hitting a bridge just after takeoff from Washington National Airport. The crash on Jan. 13, 1982, killed 78 people including four people in their cars on the bridge. Five people on the plane survived.
On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people. That was the first major crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.
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Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.
