Good point. I am also amazed that the captains were able to prevent the wake of the crafts from washing the passengers off the wings of the plane. Amazing and impressive.

The airmanship cannot be too highly praised. Airbus clearly builds a superb aircraft, but if the pilot had set plane down with the nose either a tad higher or lower, the plane expectedly would have perhaps broken apart just ahead of or just behind the wing’s main spar, or might have flipped onto its back nose-first. There’s no substitute for training, experience, and preparation.

I’ve thought repeatedly what the situation would have been like if the same incident occurred at Memphis, with the strong river current and the fewer vessels available for a rescue. It would a sad, sad story.

As a former Navy guy, I know something about ship handling, and I’ve got to say that the actions of the captains and crews of the rescue boats, particularly the three large ferries that started pulling up alongside the ditched plane within 3-4 minutes of the landing were totally superb! It is not easy to take large craft like these, racing across the water and get them to slow down enough to ease up alongside a large bobbing object in the water without actually hitting it. A collision between any of those boats and the plane might have tragically sent all concerned quickly to the bottom of the Hudson. Watching these ships pulling gently up, lowering the forward ramps then quickly and calmly embarking the stranded passengers and crew was most impressive for this old sailor!

I don’t want to shortchange Captain Sullenberger and the crew of the plane for performing this miracle, but we also need to be aware of and grateful to those first responders that sealed the deal by pulling everyone off the plane safely!

Note on the video that when the first passenger out to the end of the right wing slides into the drink, the next one zooms to the rescue.

But it also reminds me of this book riddenword’s been telling me about — The Unthinkable: Who Survives and Why. Can’t remember the author, but the message is that WE are the first responders. Us. Regular citizens.