turnaround, we flew back to New York that afternoon.
All the way back from Nassau, I checked the hourly weather reports for LaGuardia, and saw it was snowing in New York and visibility was down to a quarter of a mile. The forecast was that conditions would improve at our arrival time. But as we got closer, it looked like we might have to divert to Pittsburgh, our alternate airport.
When we arrived in the New York area, the visibility improved slightly, allowing us to land on a plowed but still-snow-covered runway.
As I was walking through the terminal, I stopped to look at the TV monitors showing the scheduled arrivals. In column after column, every flight from every city, A to Z, had the same notation: “canceled,” “canceled,” “canceled…” But when I got to the
Turned out, I was in the right place at the right time, and was able to arrive just as the weather improved. I got to the hotel when Lorrie and the kids were just about to go to dinner. I was struck by the sight of Kate and Kelly, standing in the lobby wearing beautiful wool winter overcoats with velvety collars. Kelly’s was red. Katie’s was green. They looked like pretty little dolls, dressed up for a walk in snowy Manhattan. I was grateful to have made it back to the city to see that vision of them, walking through the lobby and then into the night.
For the rest of our stay, Lorrie and I dragged the girls around—onto subways, into cabs. Everywhere we went, Kate and Kelly were two short suburban girls, lost in a sea of taller, city-savvy adults. By the end of the trip, Kate told us, “This has been a lot of fun, but I’m tired of all the hustle and bustle.”
We were able to get four seats on a flight back to San Francisco, and this time, I sat back in coach with them, and we all looked out the window together, watching the continent go by.
FOR A pilot, LaGuardia is a more challenging environment than the average airport. The volume of traffic in the New York area makes it a complicated airspace, with so many planes vying for slots to take off or land. There are three major airports in close proximity—JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia—plus smaller facilities such as Westchester County Airport in White Plains and Teterboro in New Jersey. The radio frequencies are busier than those in many other places in the country. A great many voices are in your ears, and there’s a lot going on around you that you need to be aware of.
Another issue is that at LaGuardia, the runways are short and surrounded by water. So you pretty much have to nail your landings, since there’s not a lot of extra room if you don’t. When landing, you want to put the airplane on the runway in the right place, because you’ll need to have enough room to stop. You aim for the “touchdown zone,” which begins a thousand feet beyond the start of the runway.
In the winter, of course, there are often weather conditions to be concerned about. And you have to be ready for flight delays as you wait your turn to get your plane deiced.
Still, despite all this, I enjoy flying out of LaGuardia. I like the challenge of it, and especially the view from the air—Central Park, the Empire State Building, the gorgeous homes and boats out on Long Island. I kind of enjoy the passengers out of LaGuardia, too. They often have a seasoned manner about them, and they’re not always as tough as they seem.
It’s true that a lot of passengers who board in New York can be very direct. They’ll push the limits. But veteran flight attendants know that the way to deal with them is to be self-assured and push back a little. If passengers are firmly told the boundaries, they’re generally OK with them.
When a passenger asks for two drinks at once, a flight attendant might smile and say, “Just a minute. I’ll get to you. It’s not all about you, you know! Didn’t your mother teach you that?” If the flight attendant has the right, humorous delivery, a lot of passengers smile back and accept it. Flight attendants have told me: “When you want someone to turn off his computer for landing, you can ask him nicely, or you can say, ‘OK now, that’s enough of you and that laptop!’”
On midweek US Airways flights from “LGA,” there are a lot of business travelers, and they can be savvy fliers. I often fly from LaGuardia to Charlotte, which has become a major banking center. So I might have a dozen or more bankers on each of those flights. There are always rows and rows of other frequent fliers, too, people who fly so often that they have a pretty good knowledge of the airline industry, the responsibilities of the crew, and the role passengers might have to play in an emergency.
In the case of Flight 1549, a Thursday-afternoon trip down to Charlotte, that would turn out to be fortuitous.
ON JANUARY 15, 2009, the day of Flight 1549, the snow around LaGuardia had stopped earlier in the morning. It was cold and clear, with scattered clouds. Winds were out of the north, so we prepared to take off toward the north.
We were flying an Airbus A320–214, built in France by Airbus Industrie. The particular plane assigned to us, delivered to US Airways in 1999, had logged 16,298 flights before our takeoff. It had been airborne for 25,241 hours. The left engine had seen 19,182 hours of service, and the right engine had served for 26,466 hours. The most recent maintenance “A check” (which is done every 550 flight hours) had been forty days earlier. The plane had its annual C check (a comprehensive inspection) nine months earlier. These are common statistics for planes flown by commercial airlines in the United States.
With First Officer Jeff Skiles at the controls, we lifted off on the northeast runway, runway 4, about four seconds before 3:26 P.M. Along with the two of us in the cockpit, there were 150 passengers and our three flight attendants—Donna Dent, Doreen Welsh, and Sheila Dail.
As soon as we passed the end of the runway, the local controller at LaGuardia passed us off to the departure controller, Patrick Harten, who works at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) in Westbury, Long Island. Fourteen minutes earlier, he had been assigned to the LaGuardia departure radar position, which handles all departures from LaGuardia.
I radioed Patrick: “Cactus fifteen forty-nine, seven hundred, climbing five thousand.” That meant we were passing through seven hundred feet, on the way to five thousand feet. Complying with our departure instructions, we had turned left to a heading of 360 degrees. On the magnetic compass that’s due north.
Patrick responded: “Cactus fifteen forty-nine, New York departure radar contact. Climb and maintain one five thousand.” He was telling us to climb to 15,000 feet.
I responded: “Maintain one five thousand, Cactus fifteen forty-nine.”
As we climbed through 1,000 feet, Jeff commanded: “And flaps one, please.” I repeated, “Flaps one,” as I moved the flap lever from the 2 to the 1 detent while Jeff lowered the nose, shallowing our climb as we accelerated.
Next, Jeff said, “Flaps up, please, after takeoff checklist.”
I responded, “Flaps up.” I retracted the flaps, verified that all the items on the after takeoff checklist were done, and announced, “After takeoff checklist complete.”
The takeoff portion of the flight was now complete, and we were transitioning to the climb portion of the flight by retracting the flaps. The flaps were needed for takeoff, but for our climb would only produce unnecessary drag. The airplane was in a clean configuration—with landing gear and flaps retracted—and we began our acceleration to 250 knots.
We continued climbing and accelerating. That incredible New York skyline was coming into view. Everything so far was completely routine.
13. SUDDEN, COMPLETE, SYMMETRICAL
WE’D BEEN IN the air for about ninety-five seconds, and had not yet risen to three thousand feet when I saw them.
“Birds!” I said to Jeff.
The birds were ahead of us, in what probably was a V formation. Jeff had noticed them a fraction of a second before I uttered the word, but there was no time for either of us to react. Our airplane was traveling at 3.83 statute miles a minute. That’s 316 feet per second. That means the birds were about a football field away when I first saw them. I barely blinked and they were upon us.
