Officials Find Flight 1549’s Black Boxes

Source: New York Times

Transportation officials have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the US Airways jetliner that landed in the Hudson River and sent them to Washington, investigators said early Sunday.

(snip)

By 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, crews also had pulled the plane from the Hudson, where it had been moored at Nelson A. Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City for two days.

The ravaged jetliner — which a few hours earlier had been submerged in the murky water, surrounded by chunks of ice — was resting on a barge under floodlights. The tip of the right wing had been shorn off, and pieces were missing from it. Strands of steel and wires hung loose from the back portion of the fuselage, and the passenger hatch near the nose of the plane was gaping open, hanging off its hinges.

Crews hoisted the plane aboard the barge using a crane more than 20 stories tall and two harnesses, one around the tail, the other straddling the wings.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/nyregion/19blackbox.html?hp

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this is proof positive of a pilot who knew exactly what he was doing on this ditch. There's nothing to be learned except how to to duplicate this emergency procedure in the future.

one degree off in either pitch or roll and that plane could have come apart, and we would be talking about number of deaths. A skilled pilot indeed

There was this finding...

"Subsequent simulator tests showed that other DC-10 crews were unable to repeat the effort of the crew of 232. Investigators concluded that, in its damaged condition, it was not possible to land the aircraft on a runway. As a result, the crew was given much praise for managing to put the aircraft down just off the runway centerline and saving as many lives as they did."

http://www.airdisaster.com/special/special-ua232.shtml

I was working at NASA Ames where we had the full scale 6 degree of freedom flight simulator housed in a 10 story building on base. Normally used to train Shuttle Astronauts. I know they programmed it to simulate the DC-10 with the hydraulics cut like flight 232 and quite a number of airline pilots (NTSB, industry, retired) showed up to practice landing the plane on the runway where the actual plane landed. I seem to remember that not ONE crew got it as right as the actual crew. Even after a number of attempts.

http://ffc.arc.nasa.gov/vms/motionb.html

Hopefully, they will do the same with the data from this flight. The new textbook water landing (helps that it was a river and not open ocean AND that it was an plane with a "ditch switch" that closed the below waterline openings in the aircraft which helped keep it afloat).

This AP report says, "It all happened so fast, the crew never threw the aircraft's "ditch switch," which seals off vents and holes in the fuselage to make it more seaworthy.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20090118/D95PE3UG1.html

People are always assuming things. Oh well.

That fuselage held up extremely well as did the wings. I can see an engine getting torn off or destroyed since it was the firts thing (maybe next to the tail) being introduced to the water. They would have taken the full force of the jet meeting the water.

I've read a lot about the Sioux City flight 232. I've also heard the capatin speak twice. The biggest problem they had was landing with no flaps which means they had to come in much faster than normal. Something like 250 knots versus the usual 140 knots. Couple that with the inability to use any other flight control. No left/right turns, no rudder, no elevator for pitching the nose up or down. That would like driving down the interstate with the ability to only turn right and no brakes.

people in NY or NJ who got right on their cell phones to call 911, the tourist cruise boats and the harbor boats and the Coast Guard, the flight attendants, the passengers who did not panic or climb over each other in an effort to save their own necks, etc. Everyone involved was outstanding. All the components came together, including the concerned citizens and the passengers. If any one of them had been more selfish or lax, at least some disasters would have occurred. If you all could clap on the screen, I'd ask for a round of applause for all of them.

all under "infrastructure?" A pilot knowing gliders as well as planes is under "infrastructure." too? I guess you could define "infrastructure" that way, if you really want to. IMO, most people think of infrastructure as something more tangible than human conduct.

with inadequate human resources. My Merriam's includes personnel in its definition.

calling in an accidnt. When people stood by while Kitty Genovese was being killed over the course of 15-20 minutes without calling the police, no one said it was a shame that NYC did not have adequate infrastructure or better infrastructure personnel. They said the conduct of those people was horrifying.

If I were writting the headline, I'd have gone with "recover". Not much of a effort to "Find" the flight recorders from a, for all intents and purposes, intact plane.

There was no doubt as to where they were with an intact airframe

as well as the passengers who dealt with situation in a pretty orderly manner.

The cabin crew did a magnificent job getting people out of the plane, they deserved a good share of the kudo's. The men and women who work the cabins of these aricraft, often disparaged because of airline decisions, did exactly what they had to do after the plane was on the Hudson. Their trianing, their discipline and thier professionalism is far to often overlooked. It was a combined effort of some excellent people in the right spot at a terrible time that saved lives.

I am still amazed at how well this turned out...:D

Even then, Sullenberger made another critical choice. "He made a decision to land near a vessel," said Higgins, "to improve changes for recovery."

Just before the water landing, the pilot told passengers to "brace for impact," and flight attendants shouted out "brace, brace, heads down." The plane hit the water. One flight attendant told the NTSB there was no bounce. She likened it to a hard landing.

Flight attendants said they shouted "leave everything, come forward, put on life vests." They opened the forward doors to deploy the evacuation slides, which double as life rafts. One of the slides would not automatically inflate, but a flight attendant was able to manually inflate it.

The passengers began scrambling out the front and over-wing exits. In the rear of the plane, a flight attendant decided it wasn't safe to open the doors -- but a panicked passenger cracked one of them, and water began seeping in.

Flight attendants say Sullenberger was very concerned about counting the passengers, and he returned several times to the plane to make sure everyone was off. He and the first officer and a flight attendant were the last off the jet, which was now slowly sinking into the Hudson River.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=6675047&page=2

I hope Obama invites this entire crew along with the crews of ferries, etc to the State of the Union or another event!

Flying them all in for the inauguration, although short notice, wold be great as well. But the SotU would be the best...:woohoo:

We've all seen lots of photos of other airline accidents that look far, far worse.

I'm terrified of flying, but this accident actually makes me feel a little better about it.

Maybe the Pentagon was correct in giving Airbus that air to air refueling tanker contract over Boeing a few months back....

"We find that the cause of the incident was inadvertent flight through a flock of Canada geese, two of which were ingested into the aircraft's engines. Damage to the aircraft is consistent with landing it in the Hudson River."