The Miracle on the Hudson, a NEW perspective! - Mentour Pilot

an airbus a320 is taking off from laguardia airport on runway 04 in new york and just a few minutes after starting the flight they encounter a large flock of birds, now several birds are ingested by the jet engines, leaving them unusable and the

pilot

s They are found with only a few. minutes to save themselves and everyone on board this is the amazing story of the

miracle

on Hudson U.s Airways Flight 1549 and I'm going to tell it to you from my

perspective

now before we start this video guys I want to make a big shout out. To my Patreon team, I wouldn't be able to sit here and create this type of content for you right now if it weren't for the support my patrons give me every month.

It's okay, they are actually very important to the job. what I'm doing and if you're sitting here right now thinking well, I want to be part of the inner core of the mentor

pilot

crew and I want to support him, then use the link here. I am grateful for any support you can This story I am going to tell you today is probably one of the most publicized in recent decades. Hollywood movies have been made about them. There have been dozens of articles in different publications around the world. What I'm going to give you is a view from a pilot's

perspective

.

I will tell you this story based on the final report of this incident. I have linked the final report here below. It has almost 200 pages of excellent content. Those interested in reading it and any other sources I'm using are also linked in the video description, so U.S. Flight 1549. Airways or its official call sign cactus 1549 took place on January 15, 2009. There were 150 passengers on board. including a baby on his mother's lap and five crew members, the captain of the flight was Captain Chesley Sullenberger, a very experienced former military pilot, and assisting him was a first officer with the same or almost the same experience named Jeffrey Skyles , the plane is an Airbus A320.

Equipped with two CFM56 engines, this flight was the last flight on a four-day route for the crew, so they were basically going home and this was the second flight on the day of the same aircraft on the CVR, the voice recorder from the cabin, um from this. It was a relatively short flight, which meant that the entire cvr recording could be followed from when the pilots were doing a pre-flight and it can be said that the pre-flight was normal; It's actually a little creepy looking at the preflight from a pilot's perspective because you can see how these guys obviously had no idea what was going to happen, they were joking about some minor mistakes that were being made with the load sheets that They were being corrected by ground cargo control.

There were some issues with Jeff's transmit button on. their side that they were talking about putting it in the technical log and minor things like that so that the plane would go to takeoff runway 04 at the laguardia airport in new york everything seemed completely normal the first officer jeff skyles was the pilot flying For the leg, he was the one who actually flew the plane and took care of the radios and did the pilot monitoring work. He was Captain Sully Sullenberger. Now, before we start the actual flight, there are a couple of things I want you to know from the beginning.

The question is about First Officer Jeffrey Skyles, so Jeffrey or Jeff was a very experienced first out, so he had over 15,000 hours and had flown many types before, including the 100 and the Boeing 737, but I had just started flying on Airbus. A320, in fact, had just done its skill test on New Year's Eve 2008, just 16 days before this flight, and had only logged about 37 hours on the day of the accident. This is going to be important in how you handle your role during this incident the other thing I want you to know is this aircraft in the U.S Airways fleet at the time there were Airbus 320s that were equipped for extended use over water and planes that were not correct, the difference between the two was that the planes that were equipped to fly over water had life jackets for all passengers on board, but they also had special emergency exits that could be used as emergency rafts if necessary and they were connected at the front. to the emergency exit and the stern to the emergency exit, so by sheer luck, this plane on this day, although it was not scheduled to fly over water, was one of the planes that was equipped for prolonged use over the water at time 15 24 54 because seconds are actually important here um cactus 1549 received its takeoff clearance on runway zero four began to taxi down the runway everything looked good jeff made a normal takeoff and at about 700 feet they changed the controller of the power controller on watch at departure The control controller in the New York area, Captain Sully, radioed and said it was a climb from 700 feet to 5000 feet and the controller responded that he was authorized to continue climbing to 15,000 feet, which was then recognized now around two.

Minutes into the flight you can hear Captain Sully calling the birds on the cockpit voice recorder, followed almost immediately by the sound of some kind of muffled knocking in the CBR and the sound of the engines reversing. The plane is now at 2815 feet and approximately. four and a half nautical miles northeast of its take-off runway in Laguardia, now what has really happened at this point is that the plane has collided with a flock of migratory birds from Canada. Okay, a Canada goose is a big bird, right? It can weigh. to about eight pounds and that's important because during the certification of the airbus 320 and cfm56 engines they were certified as able to take birth shocks, but the birds used during certification for testing purposes only weighed about two to two pounds and half. making a Canada goose almost three times larger than the birds used for certification during examinations of the engines after the accident it was found that at least two g of Canada were ingested in each engine, one of them appeared to have hit the outside of the fan. and was then ejected through the bypass duct, but at least one goose on each engine went straight to the engine core damaging the inlet guide vanes and also doing quite a bit of damage to the first part of the low pressure compressor.

Now this damage in itself would have caused enough damage to the engines to shut them down and make them unable to start again but of course the pilots who were at the front of the plane had no idea the damage the engines had now sustained. immediately after the bird strike. the cvr the copper voice recorder is picking up first officer jeff skyler saying oh oh and captain sully says we have one no both engines are going backwards okay it's important because the quicker you realize what's happening to you the quicker you'll be able to start acting on it and you would definitely feel like if you're getting on a Boeing 737 or an Airbus 320 and you lose both engines, the plane will feel like it's basically almost hitting a wall, it loses all forward momentum, so to stop realize that. you have a problem with both engines it would probably be pretty easy to do but what happens next is really impressive and that's just two seconds later captain sully says I'm starting the apu and I have controls the fact that he's taking Normal U.S.

Airways procedures at the time the captain takes control during a situation like this allow the first officer to become the pilot by monitoring and dealing with the subsequent checklist, but what really Impressive is that he had the mental clarity to start the apu now that this was not part of any rote item, not part of a checklist, he just did this from memory because he realized the situation they were in. and the fact that they are very close to the ground and will have very little time. and it will turn out that the fact that he started the apu so early will have a huge effect on the rest of the flight just 10 seconds later captain sully, who is now the pilot flying the plane, asks for the qrh, the checklist quick reference. to be acted upon by jeff skulls and also sends a mayday mayday mayday message to air traffic control indicating the type of emergency you have and that you are returning to laguardia the mayday part is unfortunately not heard by atc because another plane is transmitting to the same time, um, but this room, the fact that this entire procedure, what we've heard so far, only took about 12 seconds, shows a very high level of situational awareness on the part of the flight crew, just a few seconds later, Jeff Skyles is starting work. on the checklist okay remember how I told you jeff skyles just finished his typing course yeah you can notice that here because for anyone who's been out of the sim for a while or just done it maybe you know some recurring training.

Every six months it would take you a while to get your wits about you and find the right checklist, but it only took Jeff Scott a few seconds and that's probably because during the typing course you practice a lot of different malfunctions and face a a lot with the quick reference manual so he would have realized very quickly what he was seeing that he had a dual engine failure and he looked up and started acting on the dual engine failure checklist in the quick reference manual. Now it's worth noting here as well that As Jeff and Sully are now starting to deal with the consequences of this bird strike, they are still walking away from the airport and during the subsequent investigation it was shown that if they had done so immediately after realizing who had lost both engines, began a return. laguardia would have had the opportunity to land on the runway where they departed from or on runway one three, however that is not humanly possible, the way they train us as pilots is that when something happens you don't react immediately because the probability is that if If you do that you are going to make a big mistake, the way we are trained is to fly the plane, make sure it is flyable, look at the problem we have and only react with our core reactions if something is required to keep the plane flying at speed. right and this is what the crew is already doing, you know, to think that they would realize that the dual engines of a bird strike spin, that's not possible, in fact, I think these guys are reacting at lightning speed at this point from all points.

The kind of experience I have watching people in the simulator, the fact that in the first 20 seconds they turned on the APU and started working through the correct checklist and received an emergency call, it's a job. amazing but it also means that your options are decreasing the further you get from the airport without engines the lower the chances are that you will be able to return and this is clearly seen because at this point sully is talking to our traffic control the reason why sully is doing the radio and not Jeff Skyles is that normally when we have an emergency the pilot who is working on the checklist concentrates on working on the checklist the pilot who is flying also does the radio if he feels he has the ability to do it now air traffic control who knows what's going on is trying to give cactus 1549 options they're basically telling them that all the runways in laguardia are open sol is indicating that he probably won't be able to do that now most likely sully now weighing your options, okay, you know that the plane reached a maximum altitude of about three thousand feet before it started descending, you know that you need to keep your speed pretty stable, and you're on the lookout for different things to do, remember they're flying. over one of the most densely populated areas in the world here over New York City and any turn he made to try to return to Laguardia would also force him to fly over Manhattan.

Well, something you learned during your flight training is that if you don't have engines and you're turning you're losing more altitude than if you're flying straight so solidly you would know that if you decide to turn around back to the guard you're going to lose so much altitude that you'll run out. options, then okay, either you arrive at Laguardia or you will have to land before the runway, potentially in a very densely populated area and that is not a pleasant situation, in fact all you see is look. Straight ahead, where you see Teterboro Airport, but you quickly realize that Tituba is too far away, it's nine miles or so away, and then you see this nice open strip that is the Hudson River, so at a fairly early stage you can hear over the communication with that traffic control how Sully is starting to lean towards Hudson and that's probably because he understands that he has no other real options at this point during the descent.

Now Sully is obviously flying the plane looking for where. He's going and Jeff Skyles is working hard on the checklist,okay, you're reading the checklist item but the checklist item, but one thing that becomes clear at this point is that the twin engine failure checklist for the Airbus a320 was not made for a failure In fact, after takeoff, this checklist was made for what was thought to be the most likely scenario, which is an endian failure or a high-altitude dual-engine failure, so it includes things like, you know, increasing speed to 300 knots to spin up the engines. be able to start them, they have a quick discussion about this, Jeff basically says he says increase the speed to 300, we don't have that and Sully says no we don't and because a lot of the checklist is basically not made for the situation. have found themselves in are going to or he is going to have to work through the checklist just doing what he thinks he can do and this is not a pleasant situation for any pilot at any time, but what we have to look at here and something that What they do very well is that they maintain their roles.

The Divided Right Sully is concentrating on flying the plane, looking for a plan on where to land and Jeff is trying his best to use the checklist to restart at least one of the engines, because if they can do that, they can do let the plane fly again. and return it to the runway instead of the Hudson at time 1529, so this is approximately two minutes after the engine failure. Sully takes the microphone Pa and calls. This is the captain. Prepare for impact. Well, this is crucial because remember up to this point. At this point there has been no discussion with the cabin crew, they would have realized that something is wrong and it had become very very quiet inside the cabin but they don't know how much time they have but by calling this they know that you know, prepare for The impact normally occurs just before hitting the water, so I would signal to the cabin crew that they don't have time available for an emergency and that they need to communicate with the passengers to basically get them into emergency positions. support for a possible emergency landing.

Now, something else. What's worth noting here is that during the descent, Captain Sully, who is now probably looking out the windows most of the time, is gradually losing speed. During the subsequent investigation, he stated that he thought he was following what is called green dot speed, which is a safe speed to follow and that he only reduced the foxtrot speed back to f speed, which is the approach speed when they had flaps extended, but in fact the speed had been steadily deteriorating all the time as it is now descending and while descending, they also receive many different warnings, they receive beeps from the airplane that inform them about the different faults associated with the failures of the dual engine, but they also get a TCAS warning because as they go.

Now we are descending over central New York, there are a lot of helicopters around triggering some TCAS warnings, but also more importantly they are getting ground proximity warning systems warnings, GPW warnings, okay now if they would have had the abandonment checklist, which is a separate checklist, that checklist actually. It tells them to turn off the GPWS warning system because they are not supposed to get these types of false warnings, warnings that do not help them, but since they are reading the dual engine failure checklist, it does not tell them to do it and another thing that is really important to remember here is that when the Airbus 320 is built, it is built to place different warnings on top of each other depending on how crucial they are and the gpws warning is considered one of the most important. warnings, it basically tells the pilot that they are about to fly into a mountain, so any warnings that may be sounding at this point will be silenced by the gpws warning, so the fact that they are getting terrain, the terrain is accumulates, silences other warnings. warnings and in this case the speed speed speed warning that would have gotten just as solid if it weren't for the fact that the gpws warning system was constantly beeping so now it's going down and down and down in speed around 15 29 20 or so two and a half minutes after the initial engine failure, first officer jeff skyle starts to realize that he can't restart the engines, it still continues, it still starts, you know, flip the switches according to the checklist, but also indicates that Sully, you know this doesn't seem to be working and about 20 seconds later Sully calls for flaps, right, just give me flaps, uh, Jeff gives him flaps, 30 seconds later, Jeff yells that it's okay, you have flaps and gives them a speed. reading you are 170 knots you are 250 feet do you have any power that indicates you know?

He tries to simply increase the trust levels to see if any of them would respond even though it doesn't seem like it, obviously nothing comes of it. then he asked her if he has 2 flaps, do you want more? and Sully says no, we'll stay, we'll keep lapels 2. This was discussed during the subsequent investigation as to whether or not this was the right decision. Sally said that she had in her experience, uh, choosing flaps three instead of flaps two would just give her more drag and the flaps would also give her a better kind of noise attitude as she hit the water and that, as you know, also it was agreed by the investigation committee, so at this point.

They're getting very close to the water now and Sully is starting to prepare for the flare, but he remembers that I told you the speed was low. Well, it turns out that below 200 feet they are actually 15 to 19 knots below SL speed. which is like the lowest speed that gives you room to stop and remember how I also told you that it was important that Sully had turned on the apu well it turns out that if he had not turned on the apu the only power the plane would have had would have been the ram air turbine and if that is the case the airbus 320 enters alternate law and in alternate law and later direct law the plane will not have the alpha floor protection that the airbus 320 has in normal law.

If you are in normal law, what It is when the computers are fully operational, even if the pilots try to stop the plane, the aircraft will not allow them, but if you are in alternative law or direct law, it will do what the pilots tell it. them, so here, both Pyl and Sully are approaching the water and he asks Jeff, do you have any ideas? Jeff turns around and says no, not really, and this is also a sign of great airsmanship and great crm, the fact that before you know it you're facing. something like this before you take the final risk of entering the water here you see, there is something we have forgotten to do is there anything else we can do? you're using the crew to their full capacity now the way Sulley is.

Now, approaching the water, he tries to flap, but because of the protection of the alpha floor, because the speed is so low, the plane does not flap as much as he wanted. He has the stick all the way back but still flies towards the water with considerable force, the last thing we can hear on the CBR is Sully saying "Okay, let's shore up", the plane hits the water with a force that is about above the certified landing force and water and because of that there is quite significant damage to the rear of the plane, which is what hits the water first, the left engine breaks, but the plane continues to slow down towards the water and then it stabilizes because there was quite significant damage to the land part of the plane, the water entered the plane there and sinks the rear part of the plane downwards, in the certification of the Airbus 320 it is assumed that it can stay afloat to be able to use all emergency exits because remember it is equipped with these slides. cut boats in the bow and stern emergency exit because it is now sinking in the water.

The cabin crew are doing an absolutely incredible job redirecting passengers from the aft part of the plane that is now sinking into the water to the upper wing. At the exits and towards the front exits, the evacuation of the upper wings is slower than normal because people do not jump down the wings as they normally would, but rather crowd into the wings, so some of the passengers in the aft part of the plane um find a way to observe the forward emergency exits and the exits to the jingles. Fortunately, there is enough room for the 150 passengers and five crew in the boats and on the wings and that's where you get these incredible images. uh, where the passengers.

They are all crammed into the wings and the front. Now air traffic control has done a great job and they have been talking to the port authority of New York, who has been sending ships, so within minutes the ships are there picking up passengers. Because it is very cold, most of the passengers are wet and if they had not been so close to these ferries, there is a possibility that there would have been deaths here now, the flight crew, are unharmed after they have settled in Water. and jeff returns to the cockpit and actually does a sweep of the cabin to make sure all the crew and passengers are out before they themselves leave the plane through the forward emergency exits.

Now guys, I can't stress enough what a fantastic feat. This is fine and what I'm going to do is summarize this with the end of the ntsb report and what they came to when they came to the conclusion of this accident. They say the Natural Transportation Safety Board determines that The probable cause of this accident was the ingestion of large birds into each engine, resulting in a near-total loss of thrust. Both engines and the subsequent sinking in the Hudson River contributed to fuselage damage and the resulting unavailability of the aft slide rafts. federal aviation on the administration's approval of ditching certification without determining whether pilots could achieve abandonment parameters without relying on the engine two the industry's lack of flight crew training and guidance on ditching techniques three the resulting difficulty for the captains to maintain their planned speed on final approach due to the task saturation resulting from the emergency situation that contributed to the survival of the accident was one of the decisions of the flight crew members and the management of your crew resources during the accident sequence. two the fortunate use of an aircraft that was equipped for prolonged flight over water, including the availability of forward skid rafts, although it was not necessary to be equipped with them, three the performance of the cabin crew members in accelerating the evacuation of the plane and four, the proximity of the emergency personnel to the accident site and their immediate and appropriate response to the accident so that with all this in mind, the fact that they were flying that plane with that flight crew, that cabin crew on a day when the weather was good and they managed to land on the Hudson River near where the ships were and were rescued, so Quickly, I think all of that together really defined why this was called the

miracle

on the Hudson.

Now, guys, as a result of this, there were over 30 different recommendations on what to do, for example, there was one recommendation that was issued. The pilots needed to be trained for these types of low-altitude emergencies, the fact that there was a possibility of losing both engines shortly after takeoff and, basically, being trained to be able to ditch without engine power, had not been part of the plan. training program so far and that is not only for the Airbus fleet but it also happened to us at the Boeing fleet, we are also doing this type of training now because of this incident, there were also other recommendations on emergency exits, for example. about harmonizing the checklist so that for example you know that losing thrust from both engines checklist would lead to a possible abandonment checklist which would include turning off the gpws warnings so you can receive the warnings low speed and many other things like this. and this is a great example of how one incident led to an improvement in safety throughout the aviation business, okay, thousands, okay, 15.9 fourth Newton contact rate in maintain one five thousand eight eight one five thousand cactus 1549.

So, laguardia, okay, you need to go back. a short body turns left in an upward direction two two three two two zero sorry, I'm stopping you to park who has the emergency return oh, it's 15 29, the collision with a bird lost all engines, lost thrust on the engines, come back immediately cactus 1529, which engines lost thrust at both ends like you said i got it back it's 15 29. we can get it for you do you want to try landing? 1913 we can we can end up in the

hudson

2760 turn left zero seven zero zero seven zero twenty-seven sixty tall cacti fifteen point nine can you leave the traffic for runway three one can't okay, what do you need to land is 15.9?

Runway 4 is available if you want to turn left onto 184. um, what's over our trip? Anything in New Jersey maybe. cheater barrel okay, yeah, on your right is peterborough airport, do you want to try to go to peterborough, yeah, peterborough, uh, empire, actually, laguardia, exit type, emergency entrance, hey, cactus 1529, about the George Washington Bridge, want to go to the airport right now, the Bunco era project did it? Do you need help uh yes yes it was a bird strike can I take you to the runway one one way one that's good cactus 15 29 turn right two eight zero can you land immediately one in two district we can't do it right which one way, Would you like it in Peterborough?

Sorry again, thousand cactus, yes, two alpha tango, it's 900 feet beam, north Hudson, it looks like it's descending into the Hudson River, alpha tango, it looks like this may be an incident here, Roger Keeping. my eyes open two things are 12 o'clock and two and a half miles somewhat excited to tank legally radar contact roger cactus 15.9 has lost also they took away Newark airport from you two talking about seven miles oh I think he said he was going to enter the cactus

hudson

1529 if you can uh you have uh roadway uh two nine available in newark i will be at two o'clock in a few months lowering the ankle outside two roger tango hit the water roger as always guys I would love to know if you have any questions about this, what do you think about this, put them down here or go to the Mentor Aviation app or my Discord server and once again, thank you very much to my patreons who allowed me to introduce you to videos like Have an absolutely fantastic day and we See you next time.

Bye bye.