A US Airways flight flew into a flock of geese minutes after takeoff from NYC-LaGuardia bound for Charlotte, NC. The birds took out both engines and left the plane without power at a critical moment in its flight path.
Pilot Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger saved all 155 passengers and crew members by quickly scanning for landing options and found the only place to bring down the plane safely was in the Hudson River.
Captain Sullenberger is a U.S. Air Force Academy grad who flew F-4 fighter planes while in the Air Force. He has flown for US Airways for 29 years.
Commercial jets attempting emergency landings in water is extremely rare. 27 years ago a Air Florida flight bound for Tampa from Washington National crashed into the Potomac River killing 78 people.
The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights. But since 1960, only 25 have resulted in crashes by large aircraft. 23 of these incidents occured below 400 feet.