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>> The co-pilot Jeff Skiles and
Captain Sully Sullenberger, the
cockpit crew of US Airways 1549
safely landed the airbus
jetliner on the Hudson River in
New York, saving more than 150
lives.
While this event and its safe
conclusion that vaulted Jeff and
Sully into the media spotlight,
Jeff has been involved with
aviation nearly his entire life.
Jeff's parents were both pilots
and were participants in the
annual EAA fly-in convention the
1960s, which has been held back
at that time in Rockford,
Illinois.
That built his own flying
enthusiasm as he built his own
flying career and eventually
joined US Airways in 1986.
He has now logged more than
20,000 hours flying in
everything from vintage
airplanes to some of the world's
most sophisticated jetliners.
Jeff joined EAA in 2012 and
serves as the vice president of
communities and member programs.
In that role, he leads several
of the organizations key
programs, including Young
Eagles, which has introduced
more than 1.8 million youth to
flying since 1992.
He also is part of EAA's network
of more than 900 local chapters
and supports in aviation in EAA
and local communities.
Jeff also heads up the
leadership team here at EAA
AirVenture Museum.
Since its opening in 1983, the
museum has welcomed more than
2.5 million visitors.
Jeff has owned a number of
aircraft, both vintage and
contemporary, which he enjoys to
fly to EAA events and other
fly-ins throughout the Midwest.
He is a regular contributor to
the EAA Sport Aviation magazine
and is involved in pilot and
aviation safety issues for both
aviation civilian and aviation
airliners.
So, please welcome Jeff Skiles.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
I must say, when we scheduled
this about four months ago, I
had no idea the level of free
publicity that I was going to
get to promote this
this evening.
Do you know that it was on CNN,
CBS, ABC?
Of course, they might have been
talking about the event
behind me.
[LAUGHTER]
So I got quite a story to tell
you this evening.
And I'm going to do that tonight
by putting you on the jump seat.
And you're probably asking
yourself, what's a jump seat?
Well, airline pilots in the
crowd will know that between the
captain and the first officer in
every cockpit there's a little
seat that folds out from the
wall.
And it's a very special place.
And only very special people get
to sit there.
You have to be on a database
with the Department of Homeland
Security to be allowed access to
any cockpit in this country.
But tonight I'm going to put you
on that jump seat, and I'm going
to be doing that by taking you
along with me and telling you my
story.
Now, as you sit there, to your
left you're looking at
Captain Chesley Burnett
Sullenberger III.
[LAUGHTER]
That's quite a name.
In the course of our trip,
before the incident, we're up at
altitude flying out to
San Francisco and I'm looking at
my trip sheet, which is this
little piece of paper we carry
that says where we're going,
when we have to be there, when
we have to get up, and who the
crew members are, and I'm
looking at this name that takes
the entire space that's allowed
for a name on this trip sheet.
And I said, hey, Sully, with a
name like that, it must put a
lot of pressure on a man to
produce a Chesley Burnett
Sullenberger IV.
[LAUGHTER]
And he said, Jeff, that is
exactly why I adopted two girls.
[LAUGHTER]
Sully grew up in Denton, Texas.
Kind of the northwest side of
Dallas.
He learned to fly as a teenager
and got a private pilot license
before he graduated high school.
He went to the Air Force
Academy, and when he graduated
from there he went to fighter
pilot school and flew F-4
Phantom fighters just after the
end of the Vietnam War.
Sully got out of his shift
there, or his hitch, and he
joined Pacific Southwest
Airlines, which is one of the
airlines that makes up the
current day US Airways.
Now, for those of you who don't
know, which is probably most of
the crowd, he's very much as he
appears on TV.
He is the professional's
professional.
Even before our accident, I was
noticing how precise he was
about everything that he did in
the cockpit.
He tries to be the best, and he
knows that that's going to take
work not necessarily talent.
And he puts in the work to make
it happen.
So Sully is really, really quite
an individual.
To your right, you're looking at
me, Jeff Skiles.
I also learned how to fly as a
teenager right here in Madison,
Wisconsin.
Got my license when I was
17 years old.
My first job was pumping gas at
the airport.
Became a flight instructor while
I was going to college.
Worked at a couple smaller
airlines, but I was hired
at US Airways in 1986.
And I've been both a captain and
a first officer at US Airways at
different times, and at the
time, I was working as a first
officer so I could get the best
of schedules because I was very
senior in that position.
Now, I find that people like to
tell me where they were when
they first heard the news or
saw those first pictures.
Well, I don't know where you
were...
[LAUGHTER]
But I'm going to tell you where
I was.
[LAUGHTER]
We'd actually started that day
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
on a layover.
We flew down to Charlotte, and
we switched airplanes and we're
going to go on up to LaGuardia.
Now, LaGuardia had low clouds
and snow that day, and if you
know anything about the east
coast, that means air traffic
control delay.
So we're at the end of the
runway in what we call the
holding pad with our engines
shut down, down at the end of
1-8 left in Charlotte.
And I'm asking Sully what there
is to do on the west coast
because this is my very first
trip in the airbus.
I've just gotten out of training
the week before.
And the airplanes that I had
flown, I'd come from a 737 in
the Philadelphia base, and the
airplanes I'd flown had not
flown west of Kansas City in
probably my last 20 years of my
career.
So layovers like San Diego,
San Francisco, Los Angeles,
these are exotic layover
destinations to me.
[LAUGHTER]
Ironically, he starts telling me
about the Seattle layover.
And he says there's a great
opportunity there.
He says there's a place called
Kenmore Air, and you can walk
there from our layover hotel and
they'll let you jump seat with
them.
They fly these little float
planes out to the
San Juan Islands and up to
British Columbia.
I'm thinking this is pretty
cool.
I get out my trip sheet.
I get out my pen.
I'm writing down who you call,
how you set this up because
I have never landed on water
before.
[LAUGHTER]
Did finally make it out there
about a year ago.
[LAUGHTER]
But I kind of already had that
box checked.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, up in LaGuardia,
where you're going to join us on
the jump seat, a cold front has
moved through and it's pushed
the clouds and the snow off to
the east.
It's clearing but it's really
cold.
I remember walking around the
airplane, which we do every time
we land, we do a walk-around and
check out the exterior of the
airplane, and I remember that
cold just biting through my
leather jacket.
We got back, we boarded the
passengers, and every seat was
filled.
150 passengers joined us today
on this flight.
In the cockpit, you're seeing
Sully and I conducting our
pre-start checklist.
We actually go through what we
call flows where we go through
the cockpit in a very ordered
manner.
We check every switch, load
every computer, check every
system, and then, over on top of
that, we do a checklist in
between us to make sure we've
accomplished the most important
items.
We close the door, push back,
and start up our engines.
On the taxi out, I'm setting the
controls for takeoff, imputing
our weights into the computers
to get the proper takeoff
speeds, and talking on the radio
to the ground controller.
Sully's taxiing the airplane.
We get out to the end of
Runway 4 in LaGuardia.
And we stop short and I give my
takeoff briefing because this
just happens to be my leg.
As airline crews go through the
day, we swap legs.
One leg the captain flies, one
leg the first officer flies, and
we just kind of swap legs going
through the day.
It just happened to be my leg
to fly.
Now, this is not only just my
first trip on an airbus in
regular scheduled transport,
it's also my first trip
with Sully.
At the time, I'd worked there
for 24 years, he'd worked there
for 30, I don't every recall
even seeing Sully before.
A lot of people think that we're
joined at the hip as crew
members, but we're not at all.
There's 5,000 pilots at
US Airways alone, which is a
smaller carrier.
We can't depend on knowing the
person we're going to work with.
We have to sit down next to
somebody and perform as a crew
from the very first takeoff.
We do that by following our
procedures and our training very
strictly.
I didn't really know Sully but I
knew exactly what he was going
to do in any situation, and he
knew the same of me.
Our air traffic controller
clears us for takeoff.
Sully comes out, taxis it out,
lines it up with the center line
stripes, sets the parking break,
and he says, your aircraft.
And I said, my aircraft, which
is how we verbalize transferring
control of the airplane to make
sure that somebody is flying it
at all times.
[LAUGHTER]
You laugh, but that actually
is a result of accidents
that have happened because both
pilots were trying to solve
an emergency and nobody was
actually paying heed to what
the aircraft was doing.
I reach over and I grab these
large thrust levers and push
them up into the takeoff
and go-around D-10.
The airbus is a fly-by-wire
airplane, which means that
nothing in the cockpit is
actually attached to anything.
These bit throttles that I just
pushed forward operate these
tiny little microswitches below
the panel.
The control stick with which we
fly it just sends electrical
impulses to a computer that then
pours hydraulic fluid out onto
servos to operate the control
surfaces on the wings and on the
tail.
We start accelerating down the
runway.
Sully makes our standard call
outs of 80, V1, rotate.
I pull back on the side stick.
We leave the runway.
He says positive rate,
and I say gear up.
At 400 feet, we rolled to a
heading of north, which was our
assigned departure heading, and
we start to accelerate and
clean up the airplane.
At 3,000 feet in the air, which
isn't very high at all, I'm
pitching the nose over to
accelerate even further to our
air speed.
We actually have, like you have
a highway miles per hour speed,
we actually have an air speed in
the air.
It's 250 knots
below 10,000 feet.
You can't go faster than that.
But I'm only about 204 knots,
and I'm pitching it forward to
accelerate, and I remember
something caught my eye.
And I look slightly above us
and to the right
and I see a line of birds
too close to maneuver around.
In fact, traveling at that
speed, by the time you see a
bird, it's really too late to do
anything about it.
And then I hear Sully next to me
say, birds.
And that fast we were on top of
them.
Their bodies were impacting on
the wings, on the fuselage, and
at least two of them went
through the core of each engine.
And when I say the core, when
you're looking at a jet engine
from the terminal, you're
actually seeing the big fan
section.
There's two big spools of fan
blades, there are a bunch of
little fan blades that come out
around.
But if you were right up next to
the engine and looking into it,
you'd see a much smaller turbine
and compressor section.
And there's 17 spools of these
little blades behind there.
You can actually take a bird
through the fan section and have
maybe a little vibration, maybe
nothing at all, and the engine
produces power.
But we took two of these big
geese right through the turbine
compressor section of both
engines.
And they just destroyed both
engines.
I remember that we heard the
birds impact the airplane, and I
remember thinking we have to
assess what the damage was.
And then after about a second
both engines immediately
cut power.
They make a high whining sound
at climb power, and they just
reduced to nothing.
I remember the shock of it felt
like when you have a bad cold
and your head is kind of fuzzy
because it feels like your head
is going to explode.
We have our nose up in the air,
we're at our minimum air speed
for this particular clean wing
situation with our flaps up, and
we've just wiped all the power
off the airplane.
You could just feel the airplane
sag in the air.
The air speed tape is unwinding.
I'm pushing the nose forward to
try to keep the airplane flying,
and Sully decides to take over
the aircraft, actually flying
the aircraft at this point,
which is his prerogative
as the captain, and he says,
my aircraft.
And I said, hey...
[LAUGHTER]
Your aircraft.
Don't let me stop you.
[LAUGHTER]
But this is actually
a signal.
We are very highly trained, and
we can switch duties with even
just a few words.
Normally when we fly an airplane
as airline pilots, we're
constantly crosschecking each
other.
There's not any important
modification that's made to our
navigation systems, to changing
altitude, to power settings
without both pilots being
involved and both pilots
agreeing on it happening.
But when we have emergency
situations, we know we have to
split duties.
One person flies the airplane;
the other person handles the
emergency.
When Sully said, my aircraft,
and I said, your aircraft,
my role immediately changed
to that of a troubleshooter.
And I reached for what we call
our quick reference handbook,
which is a 177-page...
[LAUGHTER]
Book of emergency procedures
and data.
And I'm looking for the dual
engine failure checklist.
[LAUGHTER]
When I find it,
it's three pages long.
It's designed to be done at
30,000 feet in the air, not at
3,000 feet in three minutes
time.
The scenario it imagines is a
fuel starvation or ingesting
volcanic ash which destroys your
engines, not ingesting two geese
per engine that simply destroy
them.
But still, I start into the
checklist making sure we have
electrics and hydraulic power so
that we can actually fly the
airplane and trying to restart
the engine.
Now, back in the cabin, two of
our flight attendants are
sitting right behind the door of
the cockpit facing backwards on
a jump seat.
They don't even have a window
where they sit, and they know
that something has gone horribly
wrong with the airplane.
They obviously have long
experience in aviation.
In fact, our three flight
attendants averaged 30 years of
experience a piece.
But they knew something horrible
was going wrong but they had
no idea what it was.
We didn't have the time to talk
to them.
In the cabin, our passengers
have heard and in some cases
seen the birds impacting the
engines.
There's flames shooting about
50 feet out the back of the left
engine, but most of them thought
we had an engine fire on that
side which is scary enough but
certainly we'll be returning to
land on the engine on the right.
The right side engine was even
more heavily damaged.
The right side engine, the first
spool of the compressor section
shattered, and all that metal
went back and just threw the
engine and just destroyed it.
The left engine was actually
running at kind of an idle
power.
But the birds had managed to
knock the fuel nozzles out of
the burner cans, and the gas was
igniting in the slip stream
behind the engine like a torch
out the back.
But the important thing for us
is it was running an alternator
and a hydraulic pump because
both of those things we need to
fly.
Up in the cockpit Sully's
talking to the air traffic
controller about going back to
LaGuardia.
Now, I can't see it because it's
over on his side of the
airplanes and is actually behind
his shoulder at this point.
I can't make any judgment as to
whether we can actually make it
back to LaGuardia or not.
Our only options for landing are
to go back to the airport we
left from, a little airport
called Teterboro off on our
right, or the Hudson River which
is right ahead of us.
Otherwise, all we're looking at
are highways, skyscrapers,
houses.
There's absolutely no place that
you could set this airplane
down.
It's New York City, one of the
most congested places on Earth.
At one point, our air traffic
controller, Patrick Harten,
points out Teterboro, and I
remember pausing in what I was
doing to look out and see if I
could spot it.
I saw it on the horizon, and
then I saw that it started to
rise in the windshield, which
any pilot knows means you can't
make it.
Really our only option was to
land the airplane
in the Hudson River.
Now, what I remember most about
that descent was all the noise
in the cockpit.
We have all manner of oral
alerts that warn us of various
things.
And a number of them are going
off simultaneously.
We went too close to a
helicopter that was coming up
the VFR Corridor
up the Hudson River, and we're
getting a "traffic, traffic"
call out over our speakers.
Because we had no power on and
we're down low to the ground,
we're getting an audible
call out of "too low gear,"
"too low flap."
Our alert bell is sounding
continuously with this
ding-ding-ding-ding-ding sound
as these cascading failures are
overwhelming the monitoring
systems in the airplane.
Through all this noise, Sully
had the presence of mind to
reach back and grab the public
address telephone, which sits
between us at the back of the
console and looks just like an
old style telephone receiver.
And he presses the button on the
public address system and says,
"This is the captain,
brace for impact."
Now, that's actually a sign.
It tells the passengers
obviously things aren't going
well.
[LAUGHTER]
But it's a signal to the flight
attendants to start into their
emergency preparedness training,
that they have trained for.
They start chanting,
"Brace, brace, heads down,
stay down, brace, brace,
heads down, stay down,"
over and over and over again
to get the passengers
into the proper position
for a crash landing.
Now with this, the passengers
know that they're not going to
be returning to an airport to
land.
And they handled it in a number
of ways.
Some of them wrote notes to
leave behind, to leave in their
shirt pockets.
A large number of them texted
loved ones on the phones that
were supposed to be shut down...
[LAUGHTER]
When they left the gate.
One passenger showed me his text
at the year anniversary
of the event.
It was still on his phone.
It said,
"The plane's going down.
I'll always love you,
say goodbye to the kids."
One passenger, who I just saw
yesterday actually,
had had two days of bad luck.
Just the day before,
his wife had been diagnosed
with breast cancer.
And he's a spiritual man so of
course he made a pact with God.
And he said, God, if you have to
take someone, please take me.
So here it is, less than 24
hours later, and he's plummeting
to the Earth in this engineless
aircraft, he doesn't know what
the next few moments of his life
are going to hold, and he told
me all he could think about was,
God, I know we made this pact
and all...
[LAUGHTER]
But did it really have to be
so soon?
[LAUGHTER]
Up in the cockpit,
we're coming down through about
a thousand feet in the air.
We're not going to be able to
get the engines started.
Even if they lit off, they
wouldn't spool up in time for us
to avert landing in the river.
I started calling out air speeds
and altitudes to Sully to give
him situational awareness.
He has to land with the wings
perfectly level to keep from
dragging a wing tip and possibly
cartwheeling the airplane.
But one of the very fortunate
things that day,
and I'll tell people
we had one moment of bad luck
and a thousand moments
of good luck,
but one of the very
fortunate things was that the
river ahead of us was clear.
For anybody who's ever been in
New York, it's a very heavily
trafficked waterway.
And most New Yorkers are just
surprised we found any place to
set down an airplane in that
river.
But it was clear.
And there wasn't any wind that
day so there were no swells.
They can actually get swells,
three-foot swells,
in the Hudson River.
I remember this odd feeling
as we came down close, as the
skyscrapers and buildings were
rising off of both our left
on Manhattan
and off the right in New Jersey.
When you survive an airline
accident, one thing it gives you
the opportunity to do is listen
to your own crash on the cockpit
voice recorder, which is quite
an emotional experience,
let me tell ya.
The only people who ever get to
hear the cockpit voice recorder
are the five people that are
on the National Transportation
Safety Board Cockpit
Voice Recorder Committee
who listen to it and,
in our case, survivors, because
the National Transportation
Safety Board, who investigates
accidents in this country,
didn't understand how we
communicated, because there
are points at which we each took
action and we communicated,
but we didn't say anything.
And they didn't understand how
that happened, and they wanted
us to listen to the tape
and give them some answers.
And I could tell you,
I don't have any answers.
Neither does Sully.
All I know is that I was doing
my task, but I was completely
aware of everything
that was going on around me.
I knew what Sully was
thinking every step of the way,
and he knew the same of me.
Other than that,
I have no explanation.
We really didn't speak
as we were coming down to land
on the Hudson River.
There was no verbal
communication.
But as we listened to that
cockpit voice recorder,
we both heard something
that neither of us remembered
at all from the day.
Right before we touched down
in the water, Sully asked me,
"You got any other ideas?"
[LAUGHTER]
I said, "Actually, no."
[LAUGHTER]
We hit hard on the tail, and
then the water just seemed to
flow over the windshield.
It seemed like it was burying
the nose of the airplane
into the river.
But then it popped up, and it
was just bobbing in the waves.
I turned to Sully and I said,
"Well, that wasn't so bad."
[LAUGHTER]
But we've lost all our
electrical power.
And the flight attendants
are waiting for two words
from Sully.
They're waiting for him to say,
"Evacuate, evacuate,"
and our public address system
doesn't work.
So Sully went back to the cabin
to give that command
so that the flight attendants
could independently start their
evacuation procedure.
I stayed up in the cockpit,
because we actually have
a procedure for this, an
emergency evacuation checklist.
The first item on it is
"parking break set."
[LAUGHTER]
The second item is
"engines one and two off."
Well..
[LAUGHTER]
The left one isn't even attached
to the airplane anymore.
It's going to the bottom
of the river.
Certainly the right one
is shut down.
So I kind of went through this.
None of these tasks were really
applicable to the situation.
And probably about 45 seconds
went by, and I went back,
and I'm standing in that
little hallway between
the cockpit and the cabin
and we had the rafts open.
About the first 10 rows or so
of the airplane are already
out on the rafts.
They're empty of passengers.
And I'm stopped short because
running up towards me up the
aisle is a guy who looks like
he's about 25 years old,
and he's wearing
nothing but boxer shorts
and a pair of sweat socks.
[LAUGHTER]
Keep in mind, it's 20 degrees.
It's January.
I'm pretty sure he didn't get on
the airplane that way.
[LAUGHTER]
I found out later that he
planned to swim to shore.
So he took off most of his
clothes back there in the cabin
somewhere.
But he's already realized
what a bad idea this is
because he's freezing.
[LAUGHTER]
So he stops short before me
and he's hugging himself,
and he's shivering and he says,
"What do I do?"
And I said, go get in the raft.
[LAUGHTER]
I told the next three people,
could you go sit on that guy
to keep him warm?
[LAUGHTER]
Now, the airplane had hit
pretty hard on the tail and
actually did a lot of damage
in the back.
It pushed the rear baggage hold
up into the rear galley and
compromised the structure
back there, which is why it was
sitting so tail-low and we
couldn't use the rafts that were
in the rear of the airplane.
So the passengers had no choice
but to go out onto the wings.
It was the only place open
to them to get away from the
airplane.
Our flight attendant,
Doreen Welsh, was sitting
in her jump seat
in the back of the airplane
when some of the structure from
that baggage hold, specifically
an I-beam, came shooting through
the floor and went right into
her calf.
Her leg is spurting blood, but
she doesn't realize it yet.
She's in shock.
The people ran to the back of
the airplane where some of them
reported that the water was up
to their necks.
But she somehow got them
headed back forward
over the emergency exit hatches
over the wings.
The people got off the airplane
relatively fast.
They were enthusiastic about...
[LAUGHTER]
Getting off that airplane.
And after they were off, Sully
and I went back to about
mid-cabin because the people on
the wings had left without
taking floatation devices.
The aircraft had life vests.
In fact, life vests hang in
pouches below the seats of the
airplanes, but you would have to
read the boarding card
pretty closely to see that.
And of course the seat cushions
are also floatation devices.
So we were getting floatation
devices, seat cushions and
life vests, and handing them out
to the people on the wings.
Now, where we were, the water
was about up to our knees,
and it was just freezing cold.
It was literally ice water.
And your bones just ached
being in that water.
Both Sully and I started walking
on the seats and on the armrests
just to keep our legs out of the
water, but you still had to
reach down underneath the seats
with your hands
to get those life vests.
We did that and we pretty much
cleared out the area around the
center of the airplane.
It was settling down in the
water while I was in there.
You could tell that.
But I was never actually
concerned at all for my own
safety, because I thought if
it actually started to sink
I could probably run for it and
get out one of those emergency
exit hatches.
I was never more than about
20 feet away from it.
So I wasn't concerned at all.
But after a while, we cleared
out the area of floatation
devices and life vests and Sully
says, "Let's get out of here."
So we went back forward and went
out the normal boarding door,
the way you would get on the
airplane.
Now, I remember this odd
feeling, because in the cabin
it was calm.
It was just Sully and I in there
and we were working and we
really didn't know what was
going on outside the airplane.
Because of where we happened
to come to rest, which was right
where the ferry boats crossed
from Manhattan to New Jersey,
the boats were on shore and all
they had to do was castoff their
lines and come out and they were
already there.
The airplane
was surrounded by boats.
And there was a helicopter
overhead that was dropping a
police frogman into the water
to help the passengers who had
slipped off the wings into the
water, help them back onto the
wings.
I remember the helicopter was
just kicking up spray, and it
was just drenching everybody.
I became obsessed with the fact
that this raft is tethered to
the plane.
If the plane's going to sink,
it's going to take our raft
with it.
So there's actually a safety
knife in this raft specifically
for this, to cut this tether,
but we had about 70 people on
a raft that was designed for 40.
And there was no way I was going
to be able to find this knife.
We were packed into this raft
like sardines.
Sully called up to one of the
boats overhead and asked
if anybody had a knife.
And this guy throws down a knife
and Sully hands it to me.
I press the clasp,
it was a clasp knife, and
the blade comes shooting out.
It's like a New Jersey
switchblade.
[LAUGHTER]
I cut the rope, and then
I'm holding the knife
in an inflatable raft.
[LAUGHTER]
The significance hasn't escaped
me, but of course it's a nice
knife, you want to give the guy
his knife back, right?
Well, after a while I thought
this is just too dangerous
and I threw it in the river.
We floated around the nose of
the aircraft and one of the
New York waterway ferries
comes up next to us.
The Athena was the boat.
And the captain reverses
his engines and comes to a stop
right next to our raft.
And of course we're sitting down
on the water, and the deck
on this boat is up about six,
seven feet in the air.
Just another obstacle.
How are we going to get up
there?
Well, a crewman runs out from
the cabin and he throws a
boarding net over the side.
And I remember looking at this
boarding net and thinking,
what is it, D-Day?
[LAUGHTER]
We're supposed to climb up
this?
My hands are frozen.
I can't grip anything.
And then he throws a rope over
the side at me, and I'm
supposed to keep hold the raft
next to the boat.
I remember I held it in my elbow
because I couldn't grip my
hands.
They were just frozen.
I held it in my elbow and I'm
just leaning up against the side
of the boat, sitting on the edge
of the raft while the passengers
started to go up the boarding
net with crew members
helping them onto the deck.
It seemed like I must have,
I don't know, lost track of time
or blacked out there, because it
seemed like the passengers had
just started going up and then
the next moment that I recall
I hear Sully behind me say,
"Jeff, we better get out of here
while we still can."
I looked behind me,
and the raft was empty
except for Sully and I.
So we clamored up onto the boat
as best we could, and
I ended up on my hands and knees
on the deck.
I got up, walked into the heated
cabin area, and there was
a passenger there
right in front of the door.
He had one of those flip phones,
and he just called somebody
and he flipped it shut.
He looks at it,
and then he offers it to me.
And I thought, well,
maybe I should call somebody.
[LAUGHTER]
But who should I call?
I'll call my wife.
[LAUGHTER]
Guys, learn from me,
that's a bad move.
[LAUGHTER]
So I dial the number,
a do it with my knuckle.
It takes me about three tries
and I get it right.
I've got the phone up to my ear,
I'm staring out the window,
the plane is still floating by
at this point.
She answers and I said,
"I don't think I'm going to be
home tonight."
[LAUGHTER]
And she says, "Why?"
And I said, "Well,
we took off in LaGuardia.
We hit birds.
We flamed out both engines.
We had to ditch the airplane
in the Hudson, and we think
we got everybody out okay,
I gotta go."
[LAUGHTER]
And I hung up.
[LAUGHTER]
So then Sully calls his house
but he's got caller ID.
And his wife's talking to a
friend of hers on the phone and
she says, "Oh," when it beeps,
she says, "Oh, it's just Sully."
[LAUGHTER]
"He'll call back later
when it's important."
[LAUGHTER]
Then he calls our dispatcher.
We have dispatchers in the
airline business, to tell them
where we left their airplane.
[LAUGHTER]
And he answers and he says,
"I don't have time to talk
to you right now; we have an
airplane down in the Hudson."
[LAUGHTER]
Now all this actually
only took place maybe just a
couple hundred yards from shore
on the Manhattan side.
And in fact, the ferry terminal
was only a couple blocks south
of the actual site of where we
came to rest.
So it really didn't take us long
before we were at the ferry dock
and filing off the boat.
The entire flight
took five and a half minutes,
two minutes
until we hit the geese,
three and a half minutes until
we landed in the Hudson River.
Just to tell you the story has
taken me five times that long.
>> Cactus 1549,
700 climbing 5,000.
>> Cactus 1549,
contact and maintain 1-5000.
>> Maintain 1-5000,
Cactus 1549.
>> Cactus 1549,
turn left heading 2-7-0.
>> Ah, this, uh, Cactus 1549.
Hit birds, we lost thrust
in both engines.
We're turning back towards
LaGuardia.
>> Okay, yeah, you need to
return to LaGuardia.
Turn left heading of 2-2-0.
>> 2-2-0.
>> Tower, stop your departures.
We got an emergency returning.
>> Who is it?
>> It's 1529,
he ah, bird strike.
He lost all engines.
He lost the thrust
in the engines.
He is returning immediately.
>> Cactus 1529, which engines?
>> He lost thrust in both
engines, he said.
>> Got it.
>> Cactus 1529, if we can get it
to you, do you want to try
to land runway 1-3?
>> We're unable.
We may end up in the Hudson.
>> All right cactus 1549.
It's going to be a left.
Traffic to runway 3-1.
>> Unable.
>> Okay, what do you need
to land?
Do you want to try
to go to Teterboro?
>> Yes.
>> Teterboro, uh, empire
actually, LaGuardia departure
got an emergency inbound.
>> Okay, go ahead.
>> Cactus 1529, over the
George Washington Bridge, wants
to go your airport right now.
>> He wants to go to our airport
check.
Does he need assistance?
>> Yes, he, it was a bird
strike.
Can I get him in for runway one?
>> Runway one, that's good.
>> Cactus 1529, turn right
2-8-0, you can land runway one
at Teterboro.
>> We can't do it.
>> Okay, which runway would you
like at Teterboro?
>> We're gonna be in the Hudson.
>> I'm sorry, say again,
Cactus.
Cactus 1549, radar contact
is lost.
You also got Newark airport
off your two o'clock
in about seven miles.
Eagle flight 4718, turn left
heading 2-1-0.
>> 2-1-0, 4718.
I don't know, I think he said
he was going in the Hudson.
>> Cactus 1529, you still on?
>> We weren't at the ferry
dock long before the politicians
arrived.
[LAUGHTER]
Mayor Bloomberg and
Governor Paterson came down to
hold a press conference on site.
And of course Sully and I are
thinking we're the only the ones
that really knew what happened,
how can anybody possible hold
a press conference about such
a circumstance?
But this is where Governor
Paterson coined the phrase
"the miracle on the Hudson."
But the question is,
was it really a miracle?
We're going to come back to that
in a minute.
But I want to tell you a little
bit more about what that evening
entailed for us.
At the ferry dock, most of the
passengers were at the same
location that we were
on 39th Street.
And initially they had thought
that this was a terrorist
incident.
So the law enforcement
had mobilized as if it was
a terrorist incident.
There were more police officers
than there were passengers
and crew.
There were Manhattan cops,
Port Authority cops, DEA, FBI.
Every acronym you could imagine
was there, and nobody knew what
to do because an airplane with
155 people on it just doesn't
drop out of the sky every day.
Most of the passengers were
walking around with Red Cross
blankets over their shoulders
and were wondering
what the next step was.
Eight of them actually took that
in their own hands.
They walked right through the
ferry terminal, went out to the
curb, hailed a cab, went out to
LaGuardia, and they were on the
next flight to Charlotte.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, we were just milling around
for about, I don't know,
an hour and a half or two hours
there, and I'm thinking
something's got to give here,
something's got to break.
Sully's telling the police
either arrest us or let us go.
And then the door opens,
and in walks another US Airways
pilot, because he's wearing
his uniform.
I didn't know him, but he walks
over to us.
It turns out it was one our
pilot reps, we happened to have
a LaGuardia base at the time,
and he put on his uniform and he
lived in Manhattan and came
down, found us, and I'm thinking
thank God there's somebody here
who will know what to do.
And he introduces himself, and
then he moves off no more than
three feet, gets out his cell
phone, dials somebody
and he says, "I got 'em.
I got 'em. What do I do?"
[LAUGHTER]
What he was doing,
was he was calling our Accident
Investigation chairman.
One of the things we have as
airline pilots is we have
a large support network.
We have an accident
investigation committee that
actually trains with the
National Transportation Safety
Board as accident investigators.
They work alongside them
in an air crash.
We have people that are trained
in psychological issues to help
us or to help our families,
God forbid, get past
some of the emotional crisis
of an air crash.
We have media people to help
deal with the media.
And all of these people are
just waiting for that call.
They don't want to ever hear
that call, but when they do,
they drop everything they have.
They get off trips.
They go to wherever that
location was.
Our accident was at 3:30 in the
afternoon on Thursday,
January 15th.
By that evening, 40 to 45
of my fellow pilots had already
gotten to New York City
just to assume their roles
and to support Sully and I.
Our accident investigation
chairman said take them to a
hospital.
And the guy said, well, they're
not hurt, because we weren't.
We were wet, we were cold,
but we were unhurt.
They'd taken Doreen, our flight
attendant that was injured, off
to the hospital much earlier.
And he said, it doesn't matter,
take them to a hospital.
It's a standard procedure.
When you're in the public eye,
you don't have a door that you
can close and get behind.
A hospital emergency room
is a place of sanctuary.
Not anybody can go in there.
It's very restricted who is
allowed access to a hospital
emergency room.
So if you don't have a house
or something of even better
shelter, you go to an emergency
room.
So we went to the emergency room
in a large ambulance.
And when you go there, they've
got to take your blood pressure,
check your pulse, your vitals,
all that, and then a doctor
comes in and asks if there's
anything wrong with me.
And I said, "No."
"Okay, then I'm going to
release you," she says.
I said, "Okay."
And of course, to release you,
they've got to check your
blood pressure, take your pulse,
check your vitals.
[LAUGHTER]
And they released us and then
the FBI actually drove us
to a hotel.
We actually had several hotels
booked throughout the New York
area in case the press would
find out where we were.
Fortunately they didn't,
all night long, actually for a
couple days we were there.
And we got in the hotel and
first thing, of course, with any
kind of transportation accident
is you have to take a drug test.
But then the next thing we do is
we sit down with what we call
our critical instrument response
people.
These are people trained to help
us with psychological issues.
And there's Sully and I sitting
on one bed and these two guys
sitting on the other bed, and
one starts to tell us, he says
you probably don't realize it
but you're certainly suffering
from post-traumatic shock and I
just want to let you know what
some of the symptoms are.
You probably won't sleep
tonight.
You probably won't sleep
tomorrow night.
Maybe on the third night you'll
go to bed because you're so dead
tired, but then after an hour
you'll wake up and the whole
thing will be going through your
mind like a freight train.
And we want you to know that
this is normal and that it will
go away, and if it doesn't, you
need to seek professional help
to make sure that it's not
permanently debilitating.
And then he says, okay,
go back to your rooms and relax.
[LAUGHTER]
Relax?
We just crashed an airplane.
You're not supposed to do that.
My whole career, everything that
I think of myself and everything
that I am is going to be up for
scrutiny in a very public way.
And we knew that then.
We absolutely knew that.
And I get to the room, I turn on
the TV, it's about the accident.
I turned it off.
I don't have anything
but the clothes on my back,
and they're still wet.
And there's nothing to read,
there's nothing to do.
I put on my jacket and I just
went and I walked around the
LaGuardia area all night long.
And I came back to the hotel
about 7:00 AM in the morning to
find out that everybody was in
an uproar because they thought
they'd lost me.
Somebody had gone to get me in
my room and I wasn't there.
We were there from Thursday
until Saturday morning when we
had to give our NTSB interview
they call it, which is eight
investigators around
a conference table and you.
I haven't slept in three days,
and this went on for three
hours.
Asking me questions.
It was nice.
It was polite, but still,
it was three hours.
And then it was over.
They bundled me in a cab.
One of our US Air guys gave me
$20 for a $40 cab ride to
LaGuardia.
[LAUGHTER]
I didn't carry much cash on me
when I went on trips,
so by the time I emptied my
wallet I actually had to stiff
the guy a little on the tip
but I didn't have anything.
And then I took a United flight.
[LAUGHTER]
Home to Chicago and the bus
up to Madison, Wisconsin,
where I live.
There's some other people who
were involved in the accident.
Doreen, our flight attendant,
she was in the hospital, and
they had to stitch up her leg,
but fortunately she was
going to be okay.
She was in a wheel chair for a
couple of weeks after that.
Our air traffic controller,
Patrick Harten, the voice that
you heard on that tape, he was
so confident in his abilities
to get an airplane back to
the airport.
He'd never had a circumstance
where he didn't get an airplane
back to the airport.
And as we went down, he talks
about how startled he was
when he lost our signal
as we went behind a skyscraper.
And he lost our blip
on his radar screen.
And then it came back as we went
between skyscrapers, and then he
lost it completely.
They immediately relieved him
on his scope.
And they put him in a room with
one of the other controllers,
and he said it was like he was
on suicide watch.
He called up his wife, and he
said something horrible has
happened.
I can't even talk about it, but
something horrible, horrible
has happened.
Well, apparently they have TVs
the air traffic control center.
I'm kind of suspicious about
that, but they do.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, this was almost
instantly on TV because
if you're going to do something
like this, it's just a
cross-town cab ride from all the
major media news networks.
So they were down there on the
shore with their cameras set up
in no time.
And it's already on TV and all
the controllers are seeing
everybody's out on the wings and
everybody's getting rescued and
everybody's surviving, and this
goes on for about 45 minutes
before somebody says, hey,
did anybody tell Paddy
that they lived?
He was still in this room.
They'd forgotten to tell him.
But these are the kind of
the small stories.
And every person on board that
airplane has a story and it's
unique and it's something that
they will carry with them
for the rest of time.
But I mentioned earlier,
was this a miracle?
And I'm not really going to
debate that, but I do want to
point out a few things, and
I peppered them through my
presentation and I hope you
caught some of them.
How Sully and I do flows,
we do checklists,
we have standard call-outs,
we have pre-prepared emergency
procedures that we instantly
adopted at just the voicing
of one or two words.
How when Sully said, "Brace for
impact," the flight attendants
immediately go into a path of
preparing the cabin for a crash
landing without having to have
any more direction.
When he said, "Evacuate,"
they instantly opened the doors,
get out the rafts.
And, in fact, they didn't even
know that we had landed on water
until they opened the door,
saw the Hudson River, and
they immediately changed their
commands to don life vests,
come this way.
Our air traffic controller,
Patrick Harten, one of the
reason why ended up where we
were was as soon as we declared
an emergency he said turn left
to 200 degrees because that's
a standard procedure off of
LaGuardia for emergencies
off of runway four.
Our ferry boat crews who trained
monthly and right there in
New York City and actually
every year have to go to safety
training down in Baltimore where
they actually use simulators
for emergencies like this.
The fire boats that were
instantly out there to help us.
The police helicopter
with the frogman.
I don't know where he came from.
[LAUGHTER]
Who sits around
in a frogman outfit?
[LAUGHTER]
But he was there.
And the emergency responders and
the police officers on shore.
Even the Manhattan medical
community called in every
off-duty doctor, nurse, because
they were preparing for a
massive emergency in Manhattan.
And, of course, they got,
I think, three people: Doreen
and two of our passengers.
But this is the kind of
emergency preparedness system
that surrounds us every day.
And we don't really,
I don't think we really realize
the impact of this and the
importance of this in our daily
lives until we're unfortunate
enough to need some of these
services.
And I think that this
illustrates what the miracle on
the Hudson really was.
Sully and I had a role, but so
did Donna, Doreen, and Sheila,
our flight attendants.
As did our 150 passengers
who were perfect through this
incident.
There was no pushing.
There was no shoving.
They helped each other
every step of the way.
The boat crews that instantly
came to our aid
and all of the first responders
both out on the water
and at the ferry dock.
That is what
made this incident successful.
So maybe it was a miracle.
I don't know.
Because so many people had to do
their jobs flawlessly
to reach this outcome.
That's my story of the miracle
on the Hudson today.
Thank you for allowing me
to share it with you.
[APPLAUSE]