On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:00:08 -0800, ablackburn6 wrote:
It looks like he landed downwind as well. Everything else being equal
I'd probably prefer to land upWIND and downSTREAM to minimize the
relative speed between the aircraft and the water (in this case he got
the latter, but not the former).

If he'd turned right to land upwind and upstream he would have been quite
a way from all potential rescue boats and hypothermia might have claimed
lives while help arrived. Would he have had time to take this into
consideration when deciding where to put it? Judging by the sat pic on
the BBC web site they seem to have only had 4 minutes between the bird
strike and the splash.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7833025.stm

Another point: I spent the winter of 76/77 in NYC and remember ice on the
Hudson. None of the pictures I've seen show ice round the ditching site,
but what's the ice situation up-river where he'd have sat down if he'd
turned right?

Given the reported 3,200' of altitude
when the bird strike happened it would seem he had few options. If you
look at the flight trace it appears from where the plane ended up that
they had enough to get to LGA runway 13 or TEB runway 24.

IIRC there are hills west of the George Washington Bridge that extend a
few miles along the NJ shore on both directions but I don't remember how
high they are. Would these have obstructed or posed a risk to a straight-
in approach to TEB 24 from his turn point? The satpic shows a dogleg
round the north of Manhattan Island, turning toward the river over the
lake just south of van Corlandt park and then tracking down the eastern
river bank until he was well past the GW bridge.

I don't know how accurate that track is, but it would certainly keep him
well clear of all tall buildings and the GW bridge superstructure.

but given the need to overfly densely populated real estate (in
one case midtown Manhattan) you gotta figure the Hudson looked
pretty attractive.

Can't argue with that, particularly if, as reported, he had no flaps!


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
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