Video of US Air high-speed boat 1549

(Note: If you’re not interested in my Dante quotations, you can skip to the discussion about the survival rate in past water landings by airliners. There is wide disagreement about the meaning of this event. One correspondent just told me he thinks that Capt.Sullenberger’s achievement was routine and has been overhyped. Another correspondent, who is a private pilot, expresses his amazement at the successful, shallow glide from 3,000 feet. His comment is posted below.)

You know how James Bond would use every imaginable kind of vehicle, including a sports car that turned into a submarine, or was it a submarine that turned into a sports car? That’s what I thought of at the moment I saw US Air Flight 1549 enter the left side of this Coast Guard video linked at Powerline. In a scene shot from a surveillance camera in New Jersey trained on the Hudson, nothing happens for the first two minutes, then the plane suddenly bursts into view, skimming at high speed across the water, then slowing up. Then the camera zooms in and we see the passengers standing on the wings. I don’t know how they got out so quickly. It seems the plane had hardly stopped moving when the people were already on the wings.

Seeing that silver shape shooting across the waters of the Hudson also reminded me of Canto II of Dante’s Purgatory, in which Dante, standing with Virgil on the shore at the base of the mountain of Purgatory, suddenly sees a vessel rapidly approaching over the water. The boat is described as though it were being propelled by wings, and then we learn that the wings are those of an angel, the “ship so light and swift it drew no water.” Then we learn that “more than a hundred souls” are seated in the vessel as it moves “between such distant shores.”

Here is the opening of Canto II from John Ciardi’s 1961 translation:

The sun already burned at the horizon,
while the high point of its meridian circle
covered Jerusalem, and in opposition

equal Night revolved above the Ganges
bearing the Scales that fall out of her hand
as she grows longer with the season’s changes:

thus, where I was, Aurora in her passage
was losing the pale blushes from her cheeks
which turned to orange with increasing age.

We were still standing by the sea’s new day
like travelers pondering the road ahead
who send their souls on while their bones delay;

when low above the ocean’s western rim,
as Mars, at times, observed through the thick vapors
that form before the dawn, burns red and slim;

just so—so may I hope to see it again—
a light appeared, moving above the sea
faster than any flight. A moment then

I turned my eyes to question my sweet Guide,
and when I looked back to that unknown body
I found its mass and brightness magnified.

Then from each side of it came into view
an unknown something—white; and from beneath it,
bit by bit, another whiteness grew.

We watched till the white objects at each side
took shape as wings, and Virgil spoke no word.
But when he saw what wings they were, he cried:

“Down on your knees! It is God’s angel comes!
Down! Fold your hands! From now on you shall see
many such ministers in the high kingdoms.

See how he scorns man’s tools: he needs no oars
nor any other sail than his own wings
to carry him between such distant shores.

See how his pinions tower upon the air,
pointing to Heaven: they are eternal plumes
and do not moult like feathers or human hair.”

Then as that bird of heaven closed the distance
between us, he grew brighter and yet brighter
until I could no longer bear the radiance,

and bowed my head. He steered straight for the shore,
his ship so light and swift it drew no water;
it did not seem to sail so much as soar.

Astern stood the great pilot of the Lord,
so fair his blessedness seemed written on him;
and more than a hundred souls were seated forward,

singing as if they raised a single voice
in exitu Israel de Aegypto.
Verse after verse they made the air rejoice.

The angel made the sign of the cross, and they
cast themselves, at his signal, to the shore.
Then, swiftly as he had come, he went away.

The throng he left seemed not to understand
what place it was, but stood and stared about
like men who see the first of a new land.

The Sun, who with an arrow in each ray
had chased the Goat out of the height of Heaven,
on every hand was shooting forth the day,

when those new souls looked up to where my Guide
and I stood, saying to us, “If you know it,
show us the road that climbs the mountainside.”

Virgil replied: “You think perhaps we two
have had some long experience of this place,
but we are also pilgrims, come before you

only by very little, though by a way
so steep, so broken, and so tortuous
the climb ahead of us will seem like play.”

The throng of souls, observing by my breath
I was still in the body I was born to,
stared in amazement and grew pale as death.

For further clarificaton, here is the beginning of Ciardi’s introduction to Canto II:

It is dawn. Dante, washed, and girded by the reed, is standing by the shore when he sees a light approaching at enormous speed across the sea. The light grows and becomes visible as THE ANGEL BOATMAN who ferries the souls of the elect from their gathering place at THE MOUTH OF THE TIBER to the shore of Purgatory.

Some readers may prefer an early 20th century translation (I don’t know the name of the translator) of the same scene.

Meanwhile we linger’d by the water’s brink,
Like men, who, musing on their road, in thought
Journey, while motionless the body rests.
When lo! as, near upon the hour of dawn,
Through the thick vapors Mars with fiery beam
Glares down in west, over the ocean floor;
So seem’d, what once again I hope to view,
A light, so swiftly coming through the sea,
No winged course might equal its career.
From which when for a space I had withdrawn
Mine eyes, to make inquiry of my guide,
Again I look’d, and saw it grown in size
And brightness: then on either side appear’d
Something, but what I knew not, of bright hue,
And by degrees from underneath it came
Another. My preceptor silent yet
Stood, while the brightness, that we first discern’d,
Open’d the form of wings: then when he knew
The pilot, cried aloud, “Down, down; bend low
Thy knees; behold God’s angel: fold thy hands:
Now shalt thou see true ministers indeed.
Lo! how all human means he sets at naught;
So that nor oar he needs, nor other sail
Except his wings, between such distant shores.
Lo! how straight up to Heaven he holds them rear’d,
Winnowing the air with these eternal plumes,
That not like mortal hairs fall off or change.”

- end of initial entry -

Terry Morris writes:

Wow!, that is an amazing video all around, and excellent piloting, both by the airplane pilot and the initial rescue vessel pilot. I didn’t realize passenger planes were so buoyant. But the survival rate for passenger plane ditchings and water landings is actually quite good:

LA replies:

From the page Terry sent, here are a few instances of 100 percent or close to 100 percent survival rate. So what happened with 1549 is not totally unprecedented.

• In 1963, an Aeroflot Tupolev 124 ditched into the River Neva after running out of fuel. The aircraft floated and was towed to shore by a tugboat which it had nearly hit as it came down on the water. The tug rushed to the floating aircraft and pulled it with its passengers near to the shore where the passengers disembarked onto the tug; all 52 on board escaped without injuries.[10] Survival rate was 100%

• In 1956, Pan Am Flight 943 (a Boeing 377) ditched into the Pacific after losing two of its four engines. The aircraft was able to circle around USCGC Pontchartrain until daybreak, when it ditched; all 31 on board survived.[11][12]Survival rate was 100%

• Also in 1956, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2 ditched into Puget Sound after the flight engineer forgot to close the cowl gills on the Boeing Stratocruiser’s engines. All aboard escaped the aircraft after a textbook landing, but four passengers and one flight attendant succumbed either to drowning or to hypothermia before being rescued. Survival rate was 87%

Flyboy writes from Canada:

ABC News reported about the US Air flight:

“Splashdown came just three minutes and thirty seconds after the catastrophic loss of power, and just five minutes after the plane left the runway for what all 155 on board expected would be a routine flight to Charlotte.”

What this means, and it is quite unbelievable, is that the captain managed to keep the plane in the air for 3 1/2 minutes, having reached an altitude of about 3,000 ft—translating into a descent rate of only 850 ft per minute, a shallow descent if I ever heard of one, in an unpowered glide. It may also be the availability of this time that allowed the Captain to land close to a vessel on the river (stated in another part of the article at ABC News), allowing rapid approach for passenger pickup.

I looked at the Coast Guard tape and by watching the video clock, it appears that it took a large group of passengers, on both sides of the aircraft, to exit onto the wings in about 1-1.5 minute, another amazing feat. Remember that everyone evacuates from the same narrow corridor, essentially in a single line, even though they may exit at alternate side of the craft. Note a passenger on the right side of the picture, off the right wing, around 3:32 time, slips into the water and is helped back up onto the wing by another passenger.

As a private pilot I continue to be amazed at the outcome of this story and the amazing skill level of the captain, gliding this multi-ton aircraft into water without causing a break-up, a true professional.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 17, 2009 02:39 PM | Send