What a save!
An ace US Airways pilot made an astonishing controlled crash landing into the frigid Hudson River after his jet hit geese and lost power minutes after takeoff from La Guardia – and all 155 people aboard were rescued.
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One person suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other serious injuries.
Investigators brought in a giant crane and a barge today to help pull the plane from the river.
“We’ve had a miracle on 34th Street – I believe now we’ve had a miracle on the Hudson,” Gov. Paterson declared.
Cool-headed hero Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III – a former Air Force fighter pilot and trained glider flier – “masterfully” steered the Airbus A320, originally bound for Charlotte, NC, safely down to the river, Mayor Bloomberg said.
“Both engines cut out, and he actually floated it into the river,” passenger Joe Hart marveled.
Bloomberg said Sullenberger, 57, “walked the plane twice after everybody else was off to verify that there was nobody else on board, and assures us there were not.”
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The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season – with the water temperature 36 degrees, a Coast Guard official said.
Hypothermia, at that temperature, can hit within five to eight minutes, experts said.
It would take just a half-hour to lose consciousness – and no more than 90 minutes to die.
Of the 150 passengers and five crew members – including a 9-month-old and a 4-year-old – 35 were rescued from the water. The rest were plucked from the wings of the plane or a life raft, sources said.
US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. and was just five miles from La Guardia when the plane hit a flock of birds, knocking out power to one engine, a source said.
As the pilot turned toward Teterboro Airport, where he hoped to make an emergency landing, the plane experienced a second “bird strike” – losing power in its remaining engine.
Sullenberger then radioed the control tower that he was going to ditch the plane – and the Air Force vet’s certification as a glider pilot came in more than handy, the source said.
The plane flew over Washington Heights, then cut to the river at 1,400 feet. It went over the 604-foot east tower of the George Washington Bridge, clearing it by about 800 feet.
Patrick Wilder, a 35-year-old social worker, said, “I was riding my bike near 125th Street, and I saw [the plane] coming low.
“I was watching it, and I lost it in the sun. Thirty seconds later, some cops in a car showed up and asked me if I saw a plane come down. It looked like it was landing. It was level. It was very low. It was no higher than the bluff” in New Jersey.
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Another witness, Associated Press researcher Barbara Sambriski, was looking toward the river, saw the plane, and thought, “Why is it so low?”
“And – splash! – it hit the water,” Sambriski said.
The plane went into the river at about 3:30 p.m., just a few minutes after takeoff.
“The captain said, ‘Brace for impact because we’re going down,’ ” Jeff Kolodjay said, noting that his fellow passengers put their heads in their laps and started praying.
“You’ve got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing,” Kolodjay said.
Almost immediately, ferryboats raced to the aircraft as it bobbed in the Hudson, near the West Side Highway between West 48th and 50th streets.
Passengers sought refuge on the wings of the aircraft – which weighs 169,000 pounds when fully loaded – and shivered in the bone-chilling cold.
A fleet of NY Waterway boats began plucking passengers clad in yellow life vests from the plane and its wings as city firefighters and federal transportation officials sped to the site.
“We came onto the scene, we saw many boats, we saw the plane halfway submerged,” said Detective Michael Delaney of the NYPD scuba team.
“One woman was just holding onto the side of the ferryboat, trying to get up onto the ferry and was unable to make it.”
The seven-year scuba unit vet dumped his equipment, jumped in with just a mask and snorkel, and held on to the woman until another ferryboat came over, and its captain and crew her onto the boat.
“She was very frantic at the time,” Delaney said of the 35- to 40-year-old woman, who was wearing a life vest. “I just told her to relax. I asked her what her name was. She said, ‘Please don’t let me go.’ She thought that the boat was going to run over us.
“I pulled her up and I swam her to one of the other ferries.”
He saw “a lot of people in a rescue raft . . . just sitting there, calm and they were just waiting to get rescued.”
It was a massive rescue effort, with the NYPD, FDNY, Office of Emergency Management, NY Waterway, Circle Line and Coast Guard taking part.
NYPD Capt. Richard Johnson, of the Marine Unit, said police boats rescued more than a dozen people.
“We basically came up right alongside of them,” he said. “[The passengers] kind of jumped toward the boat and we pulled them over. Their legs were sort of dangling off the boat and we had to heave them over three or four feet of water.”
NY Waterway deckhand Wilfredo Rivera, 26, said his craft pulled 56 people to safety.
“People were screaming,” he said. “They thought they were going to die. They were saying, ‘It’s cold! The water’s cold!’ People were just yelling and nervous.”
He said that even when they were safely on the boat, “they were nervous. They were shocked.”
NY Waterway spokesman Pat Smith said that within 15 minutes, 14 ferries were put into service in the rescue, and in all, 142 people were finally rescued by its fleet.
“Many passengers never even got wet,” said NY Waterway director of operations Alan Warren.
Paterson was effusive in his praise for the rescue effort.
“I think for all the times that we’ve had to appear at these press conferences in rather dismal circumstances, this is a day to realize how blessed this city is, and how all of us are, as New Yorkers, and . . . the families and those who survived,” he said.
“There was a retired policeman from Charlotte who I spoke to and he said that he participated in these types of rescues and he’d never seen anything this magnificent as coming off of a plane into the water and looking up and seeing all those ferries coming to rescue him.”
He noted another passenger told him he had a brother on 9/11,”so he is no stranger to tragedy, but he said he is a very blessed person today.”
Speaking from her Danville, Calif., home, the pilot’s wife told The Post she was “shaking” when she heard about the crash and miraculous save.
Authorities said Sullenberger had the plane descend toward the Hudson just as he would if he were landing on a runaway.
Once it was on the water, it was only minutes before the doors were opened.
Women and children were let off the plane first as the plane bobbed south in the strong current.
“It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everyone got out,” Bloomberg said.
US Airways spokesman Terri Pope, at press conference in Charlotte, said, “Everyone who was on the plane is accounted for. There were no fatalities.”
The plane remained afloat but started sinking slowly as it drifted down river. Gradually, the fuselage went under until about half of the tail fin and rudder was above water. After the rescues, it was towed to Battery Park City and tied up – about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.
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.
“They literally just choke out the engine and it quits,” said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot.
He said air-traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.
Additional reporting by David K. Li, Sally Goldenberg, Bill Sanderson, Philip Messing, Cynthia Fagen, Victoria Cherrie, Tom Liddy, Jeremy Olshan, John Doyle, Perry Chiaramonte, Irene Plagianos, Austin Fenner, Aliyah Shahid, Maggie Haberman, Tom Namako, Tim Perone, Carolyn Salazar and Rebecca Rosenberg