US Airways Flight 1549 black boxes reveal both engines lost power together after bird hit

‘Miracle on the Hudson’: Both engines had failed at the same time, black boxes reveal.

Both engines of the US Airways’ Airbus A320 jet that splash-landed in the freezing waters of New York’s Hudson River had lost power simultaneously, the flight data recorder, commonly called the ‘black boxes,’ has revealed.

The Airbus that took of from New York’s LaGuardia Airport and bound for North Carolina, the United States, was ditched in New York’s Hudson River after it was hit by a flock of birds. Thanks to a wonderfully skillful handling of the situation led by the plane’s chief pilot, Chesley Sullenberger III, 57, the lives of all 155 people on board – 150 passengers and 5crew – were saved in what has come to be described as the “Miracle on the Hudson.”

The United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reviewed a cockpit voice-recording that showed “very calm, collected” pilots of the Flight 1549, Robert Benzon, the NTSB’s chief investigator of the accident, was quoted by the media as saying.

The NTSB, Benzon said at a news conference in New York, was able to examine the plane when it was placed on a barge after being lifted fished out of 30-foot-deep water in the Hudson River. The investigators then removed the ‘black boxes’ from the tail of the plane and took them to Washington for examination.
Other evidence, Benzon added, confirmed early reports that the plane collided with a flock of birds after it took off from LaGuardia Airport.

The NTSB investigators found “denting” in the front part of the casing of one of the engines and the “power loss in the engines was quite rapid.” “The pilot,” Robert Benzon stressed, “certainly couldn’t climb and he certainly couldn’t maintain level of flight.”

The New York Times newspaper reported Kitty Higgins, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, as saying that she felt there was “calmness” in the cockpit after listening to a recording of communications between the pilots and the air-traffic controllers. Kitty described the conversation as “matter of fact” and “very routine” and also remarked: “I was more nervous than they appeared to be, listening to it.”

At the controls, besides the chief pilot, Captain Chesley B ‘Sully’ Sullenberger III, who has since become America’s aviation icon, was First Officer Jeffrey B Skiles, 49.

Captain Sullenberger, a former fighter-pilot with the United States Air Force, has to his credit 19,663 hours of flying time – with 4,755 hours of them in an Airbus plane.
Jeffrey B Skiles too is an experienced flier, having had 15,643 hours of flight experience, with only 36 hours of them in the Airbus A320.

Kitty Higgins said the recorders revealed that Flight 1549 reached a maximum altitude of 3,200 feet before losing power in both engines at once before the plane splash-landed in the Hudson River.

She related excerpts from communications recorded by the cockpit voice recorder, starting 90 seconds after the takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, when Captain Sullenberger made a remark to his co-pilot about birds.

At 3,000 to 5,000 feet, Jeffrey B Skiles noticed a flock of birds to the right “in a perfect line formation.” Captain Sullenberger looked up and found the windshield “filled with birds,” Kitty Higgins said.

“One second later,” the New York Times quoted Kitty Higgins as saying: “There were sound of thumps and a rapid decrease in engine sounds. The captain makes a radio call to air traffic control) calling Mayday, and he reports that they hit birds, lost both engines and were returning to LaGuardia Airport.”
Lauding the crew of aircraft for their extraordinary calmness, skill and presence mind in the face of calamity, Kitty added that “the accounts on the cockpit voice recorder were consistent with interviews with the flight crew.”

Both pilots spoke about hearing “booms” after seeing the birds. The plane was then travelling at speeds between 253 miles and 288 miles per hour, based on estimates the pilots reported to the NTSB.

It was then Captain Sullenberger said he “smelt burning birds” and he said “my aircraft” as he took the controls.

Sullenberger told the NTSB investigators that he had no option but to land his plane in the Hudson River. He added that he “did not want to bring the plane over populated areas and didn’t believe he would have made it to nearby airports.”

According to Kitty Higgins, the last communication between one of the pilots and air traffic controllers before the splashdown in the river was, “we’re gonna be in the Hudson.” However, she did not identify which of the two pilots spoke that.

An NTSB official said that the evidence collected so far “is remarkably consistent” with the information furnished by witnesses and other data.