How difficult is an intact water landing?

Was Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III’s safe landing of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River an exceptional accomplishment, even a miracle, as many believe, or, as a correspondent has put it, the outcome that would be expected of a typical, experienced airline pilot? To answer the question, we need to strip the situation down to its essentials, leaving only the water landing itself. That is, we need to eliminate the initial shock experienced by the flight crew when the flock of Canadian geese collided with the plane and destroyed the engines; eliminate the uncertainty about whether to turn back to La Guardia; eliminate the pilot’s sighting of Teterboro airport in New Jersey and the discussion about whether to try to land there; eliminate the plane’s curve from a northern to an eastern to a southerly course to head down the Hudson; and eliminate the challenge of keeping the engineless plane aloft long enough to maneuver it over the Hudson.

Once we’ve gotten rid of all those factors, we’re left with this “pure” scenario: An airliner has just taken off and climbed to 3,000 feet and both its engines go out. It has several miles of a mile-wide, relatively calm river in front of it. Under those circumstances, what kind of landing would be expected? Would the smooth landing that Capt. Sullenberger achieved, with the plane left floating intact on the water, be the expected norm, or would it be very unusual?

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Paul Nachman, the correspondent referred to in the initial entry, writes:

Here’s something written by James Fallows, who’s a private pilot, the core point being this:

I noted the silly error in an initial NYT report saying that “airliners are not meant to glide.” Aerodynamically, every airplane is designed to glide—that is, descend gradually and under control even without engine power, rather than plummeting straight down if the engine stops. I mentioned that all pilots routinely practice gliding as part of “engine-out” drills. Several readers pointed out the more obvious illustration: virtually every airplane of any size glides down to the runway when it comes in to land.* Airline passengers can notice this by hearing the dramatic cutback in engine noise and power when the airplane is on its final approach. Yes, there is a difference between gliding toward a landing at “idle power,” with the throttle pulled all the way back—versus gliding with dead engines, with no power to call on for final adjustments or if conditions change. Still, gliding is normal, not an emergency in itself.

Here’s Fallows’s earlier blog on the subject. I do not defer to Fallows’s judgment that Sullenberger is a hero. Instead, I’d call him a well-trained, competent professional who did his job.

I regard the talk about “heroism” in this and so many other cases as the hysteria of the dopey and lazy press.

James R. writes:

Here was a beautiful piece of work: the Gimli Glider, a Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet and glided to a safe landing at a drag racing strip in Manitoba in 1983.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2009 01:50 AM | Send