Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [83]
The Hudson, even with all the inherent risks, seemed more welcoming. It was long enough, wide enough, and, on that day, it was smooth enough to land a jet airliner and have it remain intact. And I knew I could fly that far.
I was familiar with the Intrepid, the famed World War II aircraft carrier that is now the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. It is docked on the Hudson by North River Pier 86, at Forty-sixth Street on the West Side of Manhattan. On my visit to the museum a few years earlier, I had noticed there were a lot of maritime resources nearby. I’d seen all the boat traffic there. So it did occur to me that if we could make it safely into the Hudson near the Intrepid, there would be ferries and other rescue boats close by, not to mention large contingents of the city’s police and ambulance fleets just blocks away.
Patrick, the controller, was less optimistic about ditching in the Hudson. He assumed no one on the plane would survive it. After all, flight simulators that pilots practice on don’t even have an option to land in water. The only place we train on ditching is in the classroom.
Before Patrick could even get back to me, he had another plane he had to attend to. “Jetlink twenty-seven sixty,” he said, “turn left, zero seven zero.” Then back to me, still trying to steer me to LaGuardia, he said: “All right, Cactus fifteen forty-nine, it’s gonna be left traffic for runway three one.”
I was firm. “Unable.”
From everything I saw, knew, and felt, my decision had been made: LaGuardia was out. Wishing or hoping otherwise wasn’t going to help.
Inside the cockpit, I heard the synthetic voice of the Traffic Collision Avoidance System issuing an aural warning: “Traffic. Traffic.”
Patrick asked: “OK, what do you need to land?”
I was looking out the window, still going through our options. I didn’t answer, so Patrick again offered LaGuardia. “Cactus fifteen twenty-nine, runway four’s available if you wanna make left traffic to runway four.”
“I’m not sure we can make any runway,” I said. “Uh, what’s over to our right? Anything in New Jersey? Maybe Teterboro?”
Teterboro Airport in New Jersey’s Bergen County is called a “reliever airport,” and handles a lot of the New York area’s corporate and private jet traffic. Located twelve miles from midtown Manhattan, it has more than five hundred aircraft operations a day.
“You wanna try and go to Teterboro?” Patrick asked.
“Yes,” I said. It was 3:29 and three seconds, still less than a minute after I had first made Patrick aware of our situation.
Patrick went right to work. His radar scope had a touch screen, giving him the ability to call any one of about forty different vital landlines. With one movement of his finger, he was able to get through to the air traffic control tower at Teterboro. “LaGuardia departure,” he said, introducing himself, “got an emergency inbound.” Later, listening to the recording of the conversation, Patrick could hear the distress in his voice. But he remained direct and professional.
The controller at Teterboro responded: “Okay, go ahead.”
Patrick could see on his radar screen that I was about nine hundred feet above the George Washington Bridge. “Cactus fifteen twenty-nine over the George Washington Bridge wants to go to the airport right now,” he said.
Teterboro: “He wants to go to our airport. Check. Does he need any assistance?” The Teterboro controller was asking if fire trucks and emergency responders should leave their stations immediately.
Patrick answered: “Ah, yes, he, ah, he was a bird strike. Can I get him in for runway one?”
Teterboro: “Runway one, that’s good.”
They were arranging for us to land on the arrival runway, because it was the easiest to clear quickly of traffic.
Patrick was doing several smart and helpful things in dealing with our flight, which,