Brace for impact. How many times have you listened to the pre-flight instructions…watched the videos…read the little card…joked when they put on the mask and laughed when they show how to wear a life vest…or ignored it all—reading, talking or sleeping? Brace for impact…nightmare words that most never hear, thankfully, but a phrase that a plane load of travelers heard just last week mere minutes before their plane hit the cold water of the Hudson River in New York
I found out about the crash as I got off my plane from London late Thursday night—while pilots often relay sports scores and other news—this wasn’t something they would readily share.
I don’t know about you…but I became obsessed with the story. As morbid as we humans can be, and as much as we like to stop and watch tragedy, there is nothing so inspiring and motivating and hope infusing as a great dramatic story of near tragedy. Where the drama is high but the outcome is WHEW….
I provide this one link to the story and the video that actually shows the plane landing like a skipping stone in the water. As someone said: “everything that could have gone wrong…went right.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/15/chelsey-sullenberger-us-a_n_158331.html
But clearly there is more. If you read the story it’s clear that all owe their survival to “Sully” Sullenberger the pilot of the plane.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have trouble deciding what to eat for lunch. Sully on the other hand had to make split second decisions that were not just about his survival and the lives of his passengers but about damage to others on the ground. This was New York City he was flying over….
He was trained—yes. He wrote protocols on stuff like this—yes. He had been in combat—yes. But come on, this was different: real time, no time…
He acted instinctively. Did all the right things; made all the right decisions.
Was it training? Was it the “Blink” action? Or was it more?
I have read everything I can find on this guy. I say it’s more:
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
~G. M. Trevelyan
Sure he had the tools. But he lived and breathed accountability, for his actions and for the safety, NO—for the lives of his passengers and crew.
I don’t know about you, but I am in awe of this man and what taking real accountability can do.
I have also become one of the over 200k people on his fan site –
In a crazy world, here is something real to hang on to…
It was wired to me to follow the news on that morning, because I just talked the night before with a flight attendant, who said – to speak honest – ‘Every plane crashed at an emergency landing on water. So there is no need to pay attention at the security advice for emergency landing on water.’
Of course I will not tell you for which company this person is working for, but I am pretty sure that this person changed his mind after the ‘Wonder of Manhattan’. Of course the pilot was trained – but it was the whole crew who saved the passengers lives.
British Airways has got a fantastic ad to show the customers that all the crew has absolved a hard training, before starting on board: http://www.britishairwaysandpamann.com/. Enjoy!
I’ll definitely be paying more attention during the preflight “in case of emergency” notifications moving forward.
“put your head between your knees…and pray”
REVEALED: WHAT AIRLINES DON’T €™T TELL YOU ABOUT DITCHING IN WATER
SYDNEY €“ There was an interesting article from aviation writer Ben Thomas Hogan on the ETA/HRG.com website last week..
Thomas Hogan revealed that there is something about single aisle jets like the one that splashed down on New York’s Hudson River that you are never told in safety briefings on any airline.
And that is that if you were to pop the rear exits in a “water parking” incident like the one involving the US Airways jet, the plane will sink – very, very quickly.
Thomas Hogan wrote:
The Airbus A320s, like the one involved in the dramatic but fatality-free crash, and their Boeing 737 counterparts, will come to rest in survivable ditchings in a tail down attitude with the rear door sills under water.
But airlines all around the world consider this “too much information”.
Instead passengers are asked to study “the safety card in front of you”, which gives easy to follow instructions, also reproduced in large letters and symbols on the inside of the doors, as to how to release the doors if the cabin attendants are “incapacitated”.
Bear this in mind. You are asked to note your nearest exit. And you are shown how to operate it. But you are never told not to deploy the rear doors if you find yourself on a body of water
In the outstandingly successful emergency landing on the Hudson River, the crew seated in the jump seats beside each rear door had been trained to urge passengers forward to the overwing and front sets of exits in such a situation.
This was exceptionally important in New York. Not only was the river freezing cold, but fast flowing. The jet floated from around 50th Street on Manhattan to at least 23rd Street in a matter of minutes, bedecked on the wings, and the forward door slides, with passengers looking as if they were waiting for a train.
The forward slides on which most of them were standing could also have been detached and turned into life boats.
Awareness of the dangers of the rear exits in a ditching is just one of the critical elements of cabin crew training.
But what if the rear section cabin crew were incapacitated?
Maybe a sign DO NOT OPEN AFTER A WATER LANDING should be affixed to the inside of the rear doors.
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I liked this text and i appreciated. I’ve read all. When i was surfing youtube, i watched a video about this text. Also i have a membership of a facebook group about this fact. Thanks the writer. I am always following texts like this.
Have a nice day……