Successful 'ditch'

For those who haven't yet seen it: USAirways 1549 had an emergency landing this afternoon in the Hudson River. Great credit to the pilots and flight crew, who managed to get all 148 passengers and 5 crew out unharmed after what is being reported as a bird strike, loss of power, and descent into the river.

 

im having full on flashbacks to last October. I lost 2 friends in a bird strike accident thank fully this sounds like things went a heck of a lot better!

 

Great job of the crew!! Not many succesfull ditchings that I know of.

 

Ditching of airliners doesn't seem to go this well very often. More often than not they break up and sink quickly. The pilot did a great job of managing to get it down without it breaking up and his skill was obvioulsly what saved them all...

Kudos to the pilot...

Gotta wonder if they have have a ditching procedure in the simulator...


Edit... I just saw on the national tv news that the rate of survival from ditchings is actually pretty good (like 97%) and there were a lot of ditchings over the time period. I would guess that most ditchings are light aircraft, since ditchings of airliners is still pretty rare. I did recall that an Airbus went down after a hijacking when it ran out of fuel and broke up during the ditching.

 

It was a 767 that was hijacked and ditched in Africa after they ran out of gas. The hijackers would not let the plane land, so the pilot hugged the coast before ditching.

I am type rated as a captain in the 320. There is no procedure at my airline for ditching that was trained in the simulator. There was about a five minute slide show on some techniques when faced with such a demanding situation. There is no memory-item regarding ditching, although there is a "ditching" switch on the overhead panel which closes all valves on the aircraft to help keep the aircraft afloat. This switch was obviously activated.

Not only the person flying the aircraft (the First Officer may have been flying this leg and you would not change controls in such a situation) should be commended but the entire flight crew. To evacuate a full airbus after ditching without losing anyone is simply amazing. Ditching in commercial aviation is extremely rare. I will say, however, that there probably is not a better place to ditch than the Hudson with all of the ferries and help readily available.

 

Don't know much about flying the big tin birds but in my instruction 2000 years ago that if you couldn't get the gear down or only one came down or if you had to ditch, just make a normal landing. Sounds like that's what happened with this A320. I wonder if the engines were knocked off.

 

Thats kind of my question also, would it be better to ditch with the landing gear up and would they have had enough time to do so. Didnt know they had a ditching switch, maybe the gear would come up automaticaly. Great job by the captain, who also went twice to the rear of the plane to make sure no one was left on board. Thanks Norm

 

Thank god for that pilot!

 

i understand he is an ex f-4 pilot. certainly a capable guy!! kept his head...a real stud!!!

 

One should never ditch with the landing gear down but if you can't retract it, make a normal landing. If you can retract it, do so and make a normal landing. One story from my days in 1946 in Florida was a guy who bought a new Republic Seabee and landed it on the runway wheels up. He got the airplane fixed and went up to shoot landings, some on the airport and some on the water in the bay. Did fine on the airport and went out to shoot some water landings and lowered the gear. Wrecked the airplane and him. Good to get the sequence right.

 

Great job by that crew! And apparently the Captain walked the aisle twice checking for anyone left on board before he got off-- a true professional.

 

Now that they have had such a successful ditching ya gotta wonder if they will take the data from this event and use it to program the sim to better get you into a successful "window" where you stand a much better chance of getting it down like he did.

 

Kudos to the Pilot.....But more so to the Jet Builder...

Arent Full size Jets not supposed to be able to Glide........Didnt we learn that this heavy weight cruiser is supposed to drop...according to reports, its peak before decent was quite a ways back, yet he was able to lean , turn and stretch out decent...maybe he had limited power on one engine..


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Actually, they glide just about like anything else (other than a Shwietzer) - just faster.

 

Jet transports glide extremely well but they glide very fast and the problem is getting them stopped when they get there. The 707 has a glide ratio of just under 20...20 feet forward for every foot down but you have to have it moving to do so. High performance gliders have L/d's of 40 and above. I don't know what the A320 L/D is but it has to be pretty good. This pilot knew gliders and his jet and did everything right.

 

I used to fly sailplanes and power planes. Looking at this plan view of the flight plath makes me wonder. If it is accurate, and 2 represents where the bird strike and flameout occured, why did the pilot not return to LaGuardia? It looks like he had plenty of room altitude to execute a safe 180 and land on the runway. Maybe there is more to this story?
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Why did he not return to LGA???

Could be many reasons- we are trained and all jet and multi engine pilots are trained to fly the airplane and deal with the loss of an engine. I would guess both engines did not completely crap out at the same time. So they might have been as I think any pilots I have flow with would have been trying to fly on whatever was left. The reports did say the there were flames coming out at least one of the engines when it hit. So it was most likely still producing some thurst. Another reason for not turning around, all pilots are trained that it is a very dangerous propsition to pull a 180 and attempt to land on the runway it just took off from in a small plane (where the turning radius is so much smaller due to the speed) and something that airline crews are not trained to accomplish.

The gear does not retract when the "ditching" switch is activated. It closes all valves (outflow valves, bleed air valves, etc.). The training for ditching is to fly it just like normal without lowering the gear. The majority of training was on dealing with lining up the aircraft with waves (crests and troughs) while ditching in the ocean.

Glide ratio on a airliner is very good as stated above. A Cessna 172 is about 10/1 ratio and most airliners glide at a 30/1 ratio. The Airbus is right about there on its ratio. So every thousand feet lost in altitute you get five nautical miles. But this is at the best L/D or best glide speed. The Airbus has a great feature called "green dot." The computers calculate the best L/D for any altitute temp etc and it is shown on the speed tape so the pilots can match the airspeed to green dot and get the best glide.

 

You can see the green dot on the bottom of the speed tape on the left side of the Multi Function display in this picture. (The right screen).

Oh for those who may not know the airbus 320 or newer does not have a traditional yoke like in Boeing products. There is a sidestick (joystick) that is used to control the plane.

As for the ditching switch (these switches are actually pushbuttons) ... it is the protected switch air conditioning/press panel. You can see four black switches on the lower right of the over head panel - follow those to the left and the next black square on the next panel is the protected "ditching" switch.
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It appears the pilot was not only professional, experienced and kept his cool; he is an expert in aviation safety as chairman of the ALPA safety committee and founder of an aviation safety consultancy company. I doubt he would have ever wanted to get this kind of public promotion for his business, but now that lightning has struck, it has validated his credentials and competency like nothing else! I suspect the clients will come flooding.

 

Wonder what this pilot thought about Swissair 111.

 

Found this tread http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=221959

New perspective...

 

I don't know what he had in airspeed and altitude but I imagine that it was enough to get the airplane aligned quickly with a safer softer landing than a 180 over thickly populated bunch of buildings. There was departing traffic at La Guardia and an extremely narrow one shot margin to get the airplane back there. Airspeed is altitude and altitude is airspeed and he was short on both. I can still remember my instructor screaming at me during engine failure exercises on take off, " Straight ahead stick forward, NO TURNS!" Dead stick 180's are killers.

 

....but if you look at the map, it looks heavily populated on the ground under what his return f/p would have to be; so a better decision to look for open space? He wouldn't know what might happen next to put him on the ground in a bad place....Also a tight turn for engine-out time?
Whatever, KUDOS to Sully!

Tritone
(....lame idea for a non-pilot (me) to speculate on his best option......;-)

 

He may have also thought Teterboro was going to be his best option if the engines were still producing some thrust after the initial warning.

 

That is what it sounded like from the initial reports, when he asked the tower what the airport (Teterboro) was.



For those interested in tales of other great birds turned gliders, I recommend:

http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html


Enjoy the pilots' description of the loss of both engines:

Two minutes later, just as preparations were being completed, the EICAS issued a sharp bong--indicating the complete and total loss of both engines. Says Quintal "It's a sound that Bob and I had never heard before. It's not in the simulator." After the "bong," things got quiet. Real quiet. Starved of fuel, both Pratt & Whitney engines had flamed out.