Highest Duty_ My Search for What Really Matters - Chesley B. Sullenberger [87]
From the cockpit voice recorder:
Sullenberger (3:29:45): “OK, let’s go put the flaps out, put the flaps out…”
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System synthetic voice (3:29:55): “Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up.”
Skiles (3:30:01): “Got flaps out!”
Skiles (3:30:03): “Two hundred fifty feet in the air.”
The plane continued to descend, and it was as if the bluffs along the Hudson and the skyscrapers on both sides of the shoreline had come up to meet us. As Jeff would later describe it: “It felt as if we were sinking into a bathtub.” The river below us looked cold.
Ground Proximity Warning System synthetic voice (3:30:04): “Too low. Terrain.”
Ground Proximity Warning System (3:30:06): “Too low. Gear.”
Skiles (3:30:06): “Hundred and seventy knots.”
Skiles (3:30:09): “Got no power on either one. Try the other one.”
Radio from another plane (3:30:09): “Two one zero, uh, forty-seven eighteen. I think he said he’s goin’ in the Hudson.”
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System synthetic voice (3:30:15): “Caution, terrain!”
Skiles (3:30:16): “Hundred and fifty knots.”
Skiles (3:30:17): “Got flaps two, you want more?”
Sullenberger (3:30:19): “No, let’s stay at two.”
Sullenberger (3:30:21): “Got any ideas?”
Skiles (3:30:23): “Actually, not.”
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System synthetic voice (3:30:23): “Caution, terrain.”
Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System synthetic voice (3:30:24): “Terrain, terrain. Pull up. Pull up.” [“Pull up” repeats until the end of the recording.]
Sullenberger (3:30:38): “We’re gonna brace!”
I did not think I was going to die. Based on my experience, I was confident that I could make an emergency water landing that was survivable. That confidence was stronger than any fear.
Lorrie, Kate, and Kelly did not come into my head, either. I think that was for the best. It was vital that I be focused, and that I allow myself no distractions. My consciousness existed solely to control the flight path.
As we came in for a landing, without thrust, the only control I had over our vertical path was pitch—raising or lowering the nose of the plane. My goal was to maintain a pitch attitude that would give the proper glide speed. In essence, I was using the earth’s gravity to provide the forward motion of the aircraft, slicing the wings through the air to create lift.
My flight instruments were still powered. I could see the airspeed indication. If I was slower than I needed to be, I slightly lowered the nose. If I felt we were going too fast, I raised the nose.
As a fly-by-wire airplane, the Airbus has some flight envelope protections, which means the flight control computers interpret the pilot’s sidestick inputs. Unlike more conventional aircraft, the Airbus does not provide the pilot with natural cues or “feel” that speed is changing, which would normally help the pilot maintain constant speed. But one of the fly-by-wire protections when flying at low speeds is that regardless of how hard the pilot pulls back on the sidestick, the flight control computers will not allow him to stall the wings and lose lift.
Compared with a normal landing, our rate of descent was much greater, since we had no engine thrust. Our landing gear was up, and I tried to keep the wings level to avoid cartwheeling when we hit the water. I kept the nose up.
My focus had narrowed as we descended, and now I was looking in only two places: the view of the river directly ahead and, inside the cockpit, the airspeed display on my instruments. Outside-inside-outside-inside.
It was only about three minutes since the bird strike, and the earth and the river were rushing toward us. I was judging the descent rate and our altitude visually. At that instant, I judged it was the right time. I began the flare for landing. I pulled the sidestick back, farther back, finally full aft, and held it there as we touched the water.
We landed and slid along the surface in a slightly nose-up attitude. The rear of the plane hit much