Two days before a disabled US Airways airliner landed in the Hudson, the same plane had alarmingly similar engine trouble over Newark and almost returned to La Guardia Airport for an emergency landing, officials said yesterday.
That eerie coincidence will likely be eyed by investigators probing last Thursday’s emergency landing of Flight 1549 in the river, which so far has been blamed on a collision with geese that killed both of its engines just after takeoff.
The National Transportation Safety Board said last night that the two flights were made by the same plane, but operated by different pilots.
A spokesman for the agency said the Airbus A320’s maintenance log includes an entry recording that a compressor stall occurred on Jan. 13.
The pilot flying it that day, who has not been publicly identified, will be interviewed.
Steve Jeffrey was a passenger on the first flight, which, like the one that ditched in the Hudson, was en route from La Guardia to Charlotte, NC.
About 20 minutes after takeoff, “We heard four loud, very loud, banging, clanging noises,” he told The Post.
“It sounded like the wing was coming off, or the engine was coming off.”
Jeffrey said warning lights went on in the cabin, and he text-messaged his wife about the “scary, scary noise on the plane.”
A flight attendant then “announced they were going to go back to La Guardia and get . . . the situation looked at,” he said
But instead, the plane continued to Charlotte without further incident after the pilot announced the crew had diagnosed and fixed either an “air-compressor stall or an airlock stall,” Jeffrey said.
Air-compressor stalls can be caused by birds colliding with a plane’s engines, experts said.
Two days later, the plane, flown by hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, made an amazing landing in the Hudson River. All 155 people on board got out alive.
Kirk Koenig, president of Expert Aviation Consulting of Indiana, told The Post that the incident on the 13th “could be totally irrelevant” to what disabled Flight 1549, or “it could have something to do with it.”
But veteran professional pilot Ron Nielsen said the Jan. 13 incident could have caused engine “damage that they didn’t know about” and “absolutely” could have played a role in engines losing power two days later.
“It’s things like this that will come up in the investigation,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sullenberger wrote his fellow US Airways pilots yesterday, saying, “I am truly humbled and honored that, for an unknown purpose, the crewmembers of Flight 1549 and I have been chosen by fate to represent the professional airline employees of US Airways.
“I do not take this honor lightly and, as future events unfold, I pledge to do my utmost to live up to your expectations,” he wrote.