Miracle at 48th Street?

[herveus]

Whilst listening to Bomb Shelter Radio last night, Fuzz was talking about the off-airport landing of the USAir flight from LaGuardia. I'm pretty sure I heard him say something like "it's a miracle". I'm not sure if he was speaking for himself or quoting someone... whatever.

The first thing that leapt to mind was "If it's a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it's a Boxer Henry short point 45 caliber miracle", spoken by Lieutenant Chard to Colour Sergeant Bourne at the conclusion of the remarkable stand by B Company, 24th Foot, at Rourke's Drift in which a company stood off three battalions or so of Zulus over a day and a night. Great story.

It is clear from the outcome on the Hudson that the drivers didn't stop flying that airplane until it had come to a complete stop, then saw to the orderly disembarkation of the passengers in their care. It is a remarkable outcome, but we are not at a loss for an explanation of how it came to pass, thus not meeting the requirements for miraculosity.

Ah, well...

Update: The article in the Washington Post was laudably free from hyperbole. It did claim that the birds in question were geese -- somewhat larger than most birds. It did say "Safety experts expressed surprise that a commercial jet with modern engines could be brought down by a flock of birds." Some experts...

Comments

[jpgsawyer.livejournal.com]

I think the miraculous thing is that all the systems worked the way they are supposed to, the conditions where good, the pilot was one of those freaky individuals who didn't panic (trust me even some professional pilots do that at times) and that he had enough height and power to get to the river rather than the middle of Manhattan after take off.

That all these things happened is a testament to the engineering involved but its still pretty darn lucky.
(Reply to this)

[shalandara.livejournal.com]

One of the other lucky things was that there was a ferry boat right nearby the crash site, and got to it within three minutes. The ferry lines train for this,, and they knew exactly what to do. That first boat pulled over 50 people out of the cold water almost immediately.