The US Airways Crash: A Growing Bird Hazard

The plane was forced down after flying into a flock of birds (Bebeto Matthews / AP)

By M.J. Stephey Friday, Jan. 16, 2009, Time.com

There are many remarkable aspects of the emergency landing made by U.S. Airways flight 1549 — the pilot’s ability to make a controlled landing a stone’s throw from Manhattan in the Hudson River, the speedy response of nearby ferries and tour boats, the fact that no passengers were seriously hurt. But among the surprises was the fact that the incident appeared to be caused not by terror attack or mechanical failure, but by a wayward flock of geese.

While the National Transportation Safety Board has yet to conduct a full investigation, authorities believe the geese were sucked into the plane’s two jet engines, causing immediate engine failure, shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia airport. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, has engines designed to sustain damage from a bird weighting up to a four pounds, according to Todd Curtis, founder of Airsafe.com and an aviation safety expert. Canada geese — the suspected culprits — weigh an average of 10 pounds. More than 219 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988, according to the volunteer organization Bird Strike Committee USA.

“Wildlife mitigation” is the official phrase for avoiding accidents like these and, according to the government’s latest report on the topic, it’s becoming an increasing concern. The report, which was released in June by the FAA, the USDA, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Wildlife Service, found that since 1990 the number of bird strikes has quadrupled, from 1,759 in 1990 to a record 7,666 in 2007. Officials cite a number of possible causes for the increase:

• Most commercial airlines are now replacing older, three- and four-engine planes with more efficient double-engine aircraft. Because these newer engines are quieter, birds are less likely to detect and avoid them. Worse still, fewer engines mean fewer back-ups should a plane and a flock of birds cross paths.

• While officials use radar and radio collars to track bird populations, habitat destruction and climate change have disrupted migratory patterns. Moreover, the populations of certain species of bird are increasing at rapid rates, thanks to changes in food supply. The Canada goose population, for example, has grown 7.3% annually from 1980 to 2006.

• Air traffic has increased markedly during that same period, growing from 310 million airline passengers in 1980 to a record 749 million in 2007, meaning the skies are more crowded for both birds and Airbuses.

• To further complicate matters, officials must be careful to identify which particular type of bird are struck in each incident to help biologists conduct “wildlife management programs” without violating laws that protect endangered species.

It’s not just a civilian concern either. In 1995, the U.S. military began re-evaluating its BASH (Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard) program after a $270 million U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry struck a flock of 31 Canada geese during takeoff, causing a fiery crash that killed 24 servicemen. Solutions to the problem currently in use include habitat modification (planting specific types of grass that are distasteful to birds) aversion tactics (using dispersal teams, AKA “goose guys”, to scare them away) and lethal control (killing a specific number to reduce populations).

Commercial airports like New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, meanwhile, have gotten just as creative: Hawks and falcons, which fly solo and are therefore less dangerous, are released near runways to scare flocks of sea gulls and geese. Other airports hunt and destroy bird nests and eggs.

“The risk is real,” Curtis says, “Birds are a threat every day.” Even so, the fact that birds disabled both engines of U.S. Airways flight 1549 simultaneously is far from common. “Only on rare occasions do you have them causing a crash [like this].”

Source : time.com

How to Survive a Plane Crash

Q&A: How to Survive a Plane Crash

By Gilbert Cruz

Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009, time.com

The US Airways jet in the Hudson River (Bebeto Matthews / AP)

A former executive producer at ABC’s Good Morning America and a senior broadcast producer at NBC Nightly News, Ben Sherwood has written a new book, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life, that discusses, among other things, what you can do to survive a plane crash. Sherwood talked to TIME shortly after a US Airways flight made a crash landing in the Hudson River.

It seems that all the people got off this flight safely. That’s sort of shocking, isn’t it?

I write in The Survivors Club about the “myth of hopelessness.” People think that all plane crashes are fatal. That’s because of TWA 800 and Egypt Air and ValuJet and Pan Am 103 and all these other flight names and numbers that are emblazoned in our mind because everybody died. But in fact, if you look at the last two major incidents involving passenger jets in the United States, in Denver and now this one — I’m assuming from the CNN reporting that they think everyone is safe — but in both of the major incidents, the plane that went off the runway in Denver and this incident, you’ve got very, very high survival rates: 100% in Denver — with some injuries, obviously — and what looks like 100% here. People generally believe that no one survives a plane crash. But according to government data, 95.7% of the passengers involved in airplane crashes categorized as accidents actually survive. Then, if you look at the most serious plane crashes, that’s a smaller number; the survival rate in the most serious kinds of accidents is 76.6%. So the point there is, when the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] analyzed all the airplane accidents between 1983 and 2000, 53,000 people were involved in those accidents, and 51,000 survived. That’s an incredibly high survival rate.

Are you surprised that all the passengers seem to have gotten off the plane so quickly?

The other myth that you see in this is the myth of panic. People assume, in an airplane crash, that there’s pandemonium and people panic. But in fact, according to research done after earthquakes and natural disasters and airplane crashes, panic behavior rarely happens. In fact, as passengers are describing right now, people were scared, but they got very quiet, silent; they awaited instructions; a few people took command, got everybody in line and got everybody off the plane. So there are people crying and people that are afraid and people giving voice to their concerns, but if you’re trying to get off a plane that’s in the water and you know you’re sinking, and you’re pushing to the exits and using your loud voice — that’s not panic. That’s completely purposeful, understandable behavior.

You write in your book about attending an FAA workshop on surviving plane crashes. What were some of the most important tips that you can recall from that session?

I learned several things. There’s the five-row rule. When a professor in England, Ed Galea, analyzed the seating charts of more than 100 plane crashes and interviewed 1,900 survivors and 155 cabin-crew members, he discovered that survivors usually move an average of five rows before they can get off a burning aircraft. That’s the cutoff. In his view — and he’s done a lot of statistical analysis — the people who are most likely to survive a plane crash are people who are sitting right next to the exit row or one row away. Not a particular exit row but any exit row. That’s the person most likely to survive. Beyond a five-row cutoff from the exit, your chances, in his view, are greatly reduced. So the first thing I think about when I get on a plane or when I’m making my flight plans is, “Where am I sitting?”

I also pay careful attention to the safety card and the safety briefing, because every plane is different. That information is part of developing a plan, and because I know that plane crashes are survivable, I want to know what the exits are, what the equipment is. I want to know what’s under my seat. I actually reach under the seat with my hands and touch to make sure that my life jacket is actually there. So the safety briefings are very important. The FAA has done research on safety briefings, and they find that the least informed people, those that don’t pay attention to the safety briefings, are frequent fliers. They think they know all about flying and all about planes, so they get on a flight and pick up their Wall Street Journal and start e-mailing on their BlackBerrys.

I do not take my shoes off. I leave them on in the event that I need to run through a burning plane. I wear lace-up shoes. In the event of an impact, people’s shoes have been known to fly off them, particularly flip-flops and other “convenient” shoes. Typically, people have a couple of pops at the bar, put on earphones; they put on blindfolds, they take off their shoes, and they go to sleep. But research has shown that the first three minutes of a plane flight and the last eight — this is called the rule of plus three/minus eight — are when about 80% of airplane accidents take place. In that time, you should not be blindfolded; you should not be drunk or have earphones on. You should really be paying attention, because you actually can survive a plane crash.

Source : time.com

River Scoured for Clues to Crash

By MATTHEW L. WALD and LIZ ROBBINS

Published: January 16, 2009

The US Airways plane lost both engines when it splashed down in the Hudson River on Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a news conference on Friday. The Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers spent the day scouting the river bottom for the engines, clues to the crash of the Airbus A320 in which all 155 people aboard escaped safely.

The black box data and voice recorders and other important components that will help determine the cause of the crash are still in the tail of the airplane, which is moored to a bulkhead at Battery Park City in 30 feet of water, a transportation safety board member, Kathryn O. Higgins, said.

The strong current and near-freezing water temperature hindered divers from recovering the black boxes on Friday, Ms. Higgins said. On Saturday, she said, investigators planned to extract the aircraft from the icy water with two large cranes, placing the plane on a barge for transit to a secure location.

“The hope is to lift it up and out in one piece, if that’s possible,” Ms. Higgins said. “Once the recorders are removed, we’ll document the damage to the plane, and obviously there is damage we can see already. If we can get this plane out of the water tomorrow, I think that is a fast occurrence.”

She also said that investigators plan to interview the two pilots on Saturday morning to gain insight into their decision-making in the rushed period between the time they reported a bird strike on each of the two engines — at an altitude of probably a little over 3,200 feet — and when they ditched the airplane in the river.

She said the transportation safety board had not yet interviewed Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, 57, who has been widely praised for landing the crippled jetliner in the river moments after takeoff.

Amid his newfound celebrity — on Friday morning, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg showed off a key to the city he had for Mr. Sullenberger — the captain still had not made any public comments, nor had he spoken to the safety board.

Ms. Higgins would not elaborate on why the interviews had not yet taken place. But it is not unusual for pilots to appear at such interviews with lawyers provided by their union. Mr. Sullenberger was a member of the union’s safety committee and has served on other crash investigations.

Capt. C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who made an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

“His brave actions have inspired people in this city and millions around the world,” Mr. Bloomberg said at his news conference at City Hall. The mayor also presented certificates of appreciation to 22 first responders from city agencies and to 3 employees of New York Waterway.

As investigators prepared to hoist the aircraft from the Hudson, divers from the New York Police DepartmentIwere helping to stabilize it. Divers determined that the right engine was no longer attached this morning. But they had only been able to enter the water during slack tide, between the high and the low tides; the icy river also restricted the divers’ access to the plane.

“They are diving to help inspect it,” Paul J. Browne, a police department spokesman, said earlier in the day. “They are putting these big harnesses underneath it.”

High on the list of questions is the location of the jet engines, which were possibly incapacitated by a flock of birds during the plane’s ascent. It is not uncommon for engines, mounted under the wings, to detach from the impact of the crash, Ms. Higgins said.

Engineers using sonar equipment will continue to search a few square miles of the river through Friday evening for the engines.

Investigators said they are also looking for video accounts of the plane’s brief flight. They have split into teams and invited outside specialists, including some from the Department of Agriculture, who will help analyze the reports about birds. Ms. Higgins said that the engines’ internal parts will generally yield enough DNA to allow investigators to identify not only whether there were birds, but “down to precisely the exact type of bird,” said Ms. Higgins.

Captain Sullenberger had radioed the control tower just after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport to say the plane had suffered “a double bird strike.”

Ms. Higgins said this was the first accident in a long time where bird strikes might have been a problem. “I think it’s fair to say it’s uncommon, it’s not something we see with any frequency,” she said.

What might have been a catastrophe was averted by Mr. Sullenberger’s quick thinking and deft maneuvers, using the river as a landing strip..

“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today,” said one passenger, Mary Berkwits, of Stallings, N.C., who prepared to return to Charlotte on Friday morning at La Guardia Airport. “He was just wonderful.”

The lead officials in Thursday’s rescue spoke about the coordinated efforts amid the brisk current and icy water that enabled every passenger and crew member to reach the shore safely.

“I was worried if we didn’t get them out right away there would have been casualties,” said a New York Waterway captain, Vincent Lombardi, who was the first on the scene.

The chief of Emergency Medical Services, John Peruggia, agreed. “If we weren’t there in another few minutes and got them on board and got them warm,” he said, “they could have died.”

Many on board and others watching from shore were shocked that the aircraft did not sink immediately. Instead, the pilot landed the plane nose up, and on its fuselage. The Airbus A320 has a “ditching switch,” which the pilot probably engaged to close valves and vents to slow the flow of water into the plane. The aircraft, floating, then twisted and drifted south in strong currents as three commuter ferries moved in.

Moments later, terrified passengers began swarming out the emergency exits into brutally cold air and onto the submerged wings of the bobbing jetliner, which had begun taking on water.

“I was on the wing hanging on with a lot of other passengers,” Ms. Berkwits said. “We’re slowly sinking further and further into the water. And the water was very cold. We’re all trying to stay as warm as possible by holding on to one another.”

As the first ferry nudged up alongside, witnesses said, some passengers were able to leap onto the deck. Others were helped aboard by ferry crews. Soon, a small armada of police boats, fireboats, tugboats and Coast Guard craft converged on the scene, and some of them snubbed up to keep the jetliner afloat. Helicopters brought police divers, who also helped with the rescue.

A picture emerged late Thursday and Friday morning of just how perilous the rescue and the towing of the aircraft was as boat operators battled the swift tide.

Capt. Richard Johnson, 52, of the New York Fire Department, said: “We came right alongside the wing and the pilot did a great job of holding position. They kind of jumped toward the boat and we pulled them off, one at a time. Their legs would be hanging over the side and then we had to heave them over the side of the boat and we had to do that with each individual person.”

Capt. Vincent Lucante, 41, of New York Waterway, who helped rescue two infants from an emergency life raft, had his own harrowing tale to tell. He said he saw the mothers handing the babies to a crew member, before climbing the steps to the ferry.

“They were all shivering,” Mr. Lucante said. “I felt so much relief to get the children off that life raft. When they got up to the second deck of the ferry, where it is warmest, they started to cry, which was the best sound you could hear.”

Brought ashore on both sides of the river, the survivors were taken to hospitals in Manhattan and New Jersey, mostly for treatment of exposure to the brutal cold: 18 degrees in the air and about 35 degrees in the water that many had stood in.

Once all the passengers had been evacuated onto rescue boats — and the pilot walked up and down the aisle twice to make sure the plane was empty — the fire boat, a 27-foot rescue vessel, had to secure the plane.

“We ran the rope through the cockpit door, open, and out the other side, through the other side and got it lashed through,” Mr. Johnson said. “We wrapped it around the tail. We were not sure the two lines would hold up. And they could have snapped anytime. A couple times, we were attempting to get more lines on it, but we were nearing close to Battery Park.”

On Friday, investigators focused on recovering the “black boxes,” the cockpit voice recorder, which would probably capture conversations between the two pilots, and the flight data recorder. On this airplane, 10 years old, the flight data recorder keeps a detailed record of the functioning of engines, flight-control surfaces, pumps, valves and many other airplane parts.

W. Douglas Parker, chairman and chief executive of US Airways, and officials of the Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday that Flight 1549 had taken off from La Guardia at 3:26 p.m., bound for Charlotte. It headed north, across the East River and over the Bronx on a route that would involve a sweeping left turn to head south. But both engines lost power about a minute into the flight.

At the news conference with the mayor on Friday, Mr. Parker said, “Yesterday’s event unfolded in a matter of minutes, and determining what happened will take longer than that.”

Reporting was contributed by Michael Barbaro, Carla Baranauckas, Ken Belson, Viv Bernstein, Ralph Blumenthal, Cara Buckley, Russ Buettner, David W. Chen, Glenn Collins, Jim Dwyer, Kareem Fahim, Kevin Flynn, Anemona Hartocollis, Christine Hauser, Javier C. Hernandez, C. J. Hughes, Tina Kelley, Corey Kilgannon, Patrick LaForge, Andrew W. Lehren, Robert D. McFadeden, Patrick McGeehan, Jo Craven McGinty, Mick Meenan, Colin Moynihan, Christine Negroni, Kenny Porpora, William K. Rashbaum, Ray Rivera, Marc Santora, Nate Schweber, Kirk Semple, Joel Stonington, A. E. Velez, Mathew R. Warren and Margot Williams.

Source : New York Times

Divers look for both engines of plane in Hudson

By JENNIFER PELTZ and CRISTIAN SALAZAR, Associated Press

NEW YORK – Federal investigators said both engines of the US Airways jetliner that ditched into the Hudson River were missing Friday as reports emerged that the pilot who safely landed the aircraft had considered an emergency landing at two airports. Police divers were using sonar to find the engines. Kitty Higgins of the National Transportation Safety Board said both apparently came off after hitting the water Thursday.

Crews plan to hoist the plane from the water on Saturday before putting it on a barge and removing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. They had hoped to do so Friday, but bitterly cold weather and strong river currents hampered the efforts, Higgins said.

Higgins suggested that part of the investigation will be to “celebrate what worked here,” something of a rarity for an agency that focuses on figuring out what went wrong in a disaster.

“A lot of things went right yesterday, including the way that not only the crew functioned, but the way the plane functioned.”

Part of the NTSB’s job, she said, will be to look at “everything that made yesterday’s accident so survivable.”

As investigators scoured the wreckage of the Airbus A320, many of the 155 people aboard recounted survivor stories and hailed the pilot as a hero who delivered them from certain death.

The pilot, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III, was in good spirits and showing no outward signs of stress from the ordeal, a pilots union official said.

His wife, in an interview outside their California home, called him “a pilot’s pilot” and said talk of him being a national hero was “a little weird.”

A person briefed on Sullenberger’s radio communications said the pilot considered emergency landings at two airports after his plane suffered a double bird strike, but twice told air controllers he was unable to make them. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Air traffic controllers first gave Sullenberger directions to return to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, but he replied, “unable.” Then he saw the Teterboro airstrip in the northern New Jersey suburbs, got clearance to go there, but then again responded, “unable.” He then said he was going into the river.

It was not immediately clear when the engines broke off, but such scenarios can happen in bird strikes.

If an engine takes in a very large bird — or several birds at once — they could break several fan blades, causing an imbalance in the engine’s rotation and severe vibrations, said Kevin Poormon, who tests the ability of aircraft engines to withstand bird strikes.

If the engine doesn’t shut down right away, those vibrations conceivably could be strong enough to cause the engine to come loose from its mounting, Poormon said.

In a photograph of the plane as it approached the river, it appeared to have both engines.

Passengers were effusive in their praise for how Sullenberger, co-pilot Jeff Skiles and their crew handled the landing and evacuation.

Mark P. Hood, of Charlotte, N.C., said he felt a jolt ripple through the jet as though a baseball bat hit the engine close to the George Washington Bridge.

“I think everyone was holding their breath, making their peace, saying their prayers,” Hood said Friday.

Passenger Billy Campbell said he approached Sullenberger while they were standing on a rescue raft in the frigid cold.

“I leaned over and grabbed his arm, and I said I just want to thank you on behalf of all of us,” Campbell told NBC’s “Today” show. “He just said, ‘You’re welcome.'”‘

NTSB investigators were focused on recovering the plane’s black box and interviewing the crew about the accident. The pilots were to be interviewed Saturday, Higgins said.

The aircraft, built in 1999, was tethered to a pier on the tip of lower Manhattan on Friday — about four miles from where it touched down. Only a gray wing tip could be seen jutting out of the water.

Crews of NYPD divers went underwater Friday to inspect the belly of the plane to make sure it was stable enough to lift and secure a bed of ropes underneath it.

Police and emergency crews also pulled about 15 pieces of carry-on luggage, the door of the plane, sheared pieces of metal and flotation devices from the water.

Arnold Witte, president of the Donjon Marine salvage company, said it was unclear whether the plane would be pulled out in one or several segments.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said there was no immediate indication the incident was “anything other than an accident.”

The plane, bound for Charlotte, N.C., took off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 p.m. Thursday. Less than a minute later, the pilot reported a “double bird strike” and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

If the accident was hard to imagine, so was the result: Besides one victim with two broken legs, there were no other reports of serious injuries to the 155 people aboard.

Passengers quickly realized something was terrifyingly wrong.

“I heard an explosion, and I saw flames coming from the left wing, and I thought, `This isn’t good,'” said Dave Sanderson, 47, who was heading home to Charlotte from a business trip.

Then came an ominous warning from the captain: “Brace for impact because we’re going down,” said passenger Jeff Kolodjay, 31.

The 150 passengers and five crew members were forced to escape as the plane quickly became submerged up to its windows in 36-degree water. Dozens stood on the aircraft’s wings on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the winter, as commuter ferries and Coast Guard vessels converged to rescue them.

At a City Hall ceremony Friday to honor those who came to the aid of the stranded passengers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sullenberger’s actions “inspired people around the city, and millions more around the world.”

Bloomberg planned to present the pilot with the key to the city.

Lorrie Sullenberger and her two daughters emerged from her Danville, Calif., home Friday and called her husband “a pilot’s pilot” who “loves the art of the airplane.”

Sullenberger, 57, of Danville, Calif., is a former Air Force fighter pilot who has flown for US Airways for 29 years. He also runs a safety consulting firm.

Lorrie Sullenberger said hearing her husband’s story “was really a shock. … My husband said over the years that it’s highly unlikely for any pilot to ever have any incident in his career, let alone something like this.”

She called talk of her husband being a national hero “a little weird.”

The pilot’s sister, Mary Margaret Wilson, said she had a gut feeling her brother was at the controls when she heard a passenger plane safely landed in the Hudson River.

“When I first saw it on TV, they were saying it was an amazing landing, like one in a million. And I thought to myself, ‘That’s something my brother could do,'” said Wilson, a Dallas resident.

James Ray, a spokesman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, said he spoke with Sullenberger on Friday and described him as being “in good shape physically, mentally and in good spirits.”

Ray said the crew has been asked not talk to the press about the accident until after the NTSB investigation is complete.

From 1990 to 2007, there were nearly 80,000 reported incidents of birds striking nonmilitary aircraft, about one strike for every 10,000 flights, according to the FAA and the Department of Agriculture.

Thursday’s river landing took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight survived.

___

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy, Michael J. Sniffen and Eileen Sullivan in Washington; David B. Caruso, Verena Dobnik, Sara Kugler, Marcus Franklin, Samantha Gross, Deborah Hastings, Colleen Long and Richard Pyle in New York; Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh; Victor Epstein in Weehawken, N.J.; Sam Hananel in Washington; Jeff Carlton in Dallas; and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Source : Associated Press and http://news.yahoo.com