Flight 1549 (Hudson River) voice recorder audio

[draggar]

Amazing audio.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/MP3s/ratc1549.mp3

It's amazing at how calm the pilot is throughout it all even though it seems that the traffic controller seems to not understand at times.

(Edit - it's actually chilling listening to it)

The transcript:

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cvr090115.htm

[Dreamstalker]

I find it blackly amusing near the end "Which runway would you like?" "We'll be in the Hudson." It is eerie how calm he is, although that's what probably saved everyone.

I was arguing (yes, arguing) with the ex about this; he says it scares him only because "this was a one-in-a-million shot, you know some young pilot is going to try the same thing because he saw it on TV". I would think that good pilots know the limitations of themselves and the equipment they're flying, especially when they're responsible for strangers. Ex said that he should have tried to make it to a runway...ditching on land would have had a much worse outcome I'm sure. The pilot did what he had to; weighed the options and acted based on those choices.

[lordlundar]

I was arguing (yes, arguing) with the ex about this; he says it scares him only because "this was a one-in-a-million shot, you know some young pilot is going to try the same thing because he saw it on TV". I would think that good pilots know the limitations of themselves and the equipment they're flying, especially when they're responsible for strangers. Ex said that he should have tried to make it to a runway...ditching on land would have had a much worse outcome I'm sure. The pilot did what he had to; weighed the options and acted based on those choices.

Your ex is a moron, and that's being nice about it.

To blow some holes in his argument:

1) The plane is a multi-million dollar machine that becomes the responsibility of the pilot when he takes off, to say nothing of the lives of the passengers. If a pilot is going to do this just because he "saw it on TV", then he's looking at multiple attempted murder charges and will be sued into oblivion. As well, even though the incident is one in a million, pilots are TRAINED for this type of emergency landing, so provided they don't panic, they are able to do it as well. Most known airplane disasters occurred partly as a result because someone wasn't thinking clearly at a critical point.

2) It's not a glider, it's a 747, fully loaded and fueled, with no power. The gliding distance is extremely short. His choices were the Hudson, or try for the airport he took off from, which he knew he'd never make it to. Potential safe landing, or definite fireball in downtown New York. Me, I'd take the slim chance to the guaranteed disaster.

[Bandit]

The one thing that struck me about this (and the Gimli Glider is that both pilots were glider qualified. I think that made the difference between hundreds of lives lost between the two incidents and everyone walking away.

It's rare when my dad, who trained as a pilot in WWII, is awestruck, and he was about how calm everyone was. That said, I loved the Letterman interview with the whole crew.

B