in Manhattan.
But was I really ready to completely rule out LaGuardia?
Looking out the window, I saw how rapidly we were descending. My decision would need to come in an instant: Did we have enough altitude and speed to make the turn back toward the airport and then reach it before hitting the ground? There wasn’t time to do the math, so it’s not as if I was making altitude-descent calculations in my head. But I was judging what I saw out the window and creating, very quickly, a three-dimensional mental model of where we were. It was a conceptual and visual process, and I was doing this while I was flying the airplane as well as responding to Jeff and Patrick.
I also thought quickly about the obstacles between us and LaGuardia—the buildings, the neighborhoods, the hundreds of thousands of people below us. I can’t say I thought about all of this in any detail. I was quickly running through a host of facts and observations that I had filed away over the years, giving me a broad sense of how to make this decision, the most important one of my life.
I knew that if I chose to turn back across this densely populated area, I had to be certain we could make it. Once I turned toward LaGuardia, it would be an irrevocable choice. It would rule out every other option. And attempting to reach a runway that was unreachable could have had catastrophic consequences for everyone on the airplane and who knows how many people on the ground. Even if we made it to LaGuardia and missed the runway by a few feet, the result would be disastrous. The plane would likely tear open and be engulfed in flames.
I also considered the fact that, no matter what, we’d likely need a serious rescue effort. I knew that the water rescue resources at LaGuardia were a tiny fraction of those available on the Hudson between Manhattan and New Jersey. It would take much longer for rescue workers at LaGuardia to reach us and then help us if we tried for the runway and missed it.
And even if we could remain airborne until we were over a runway, there were potential hazards. Jeff would have had to stop trying to restart the engines, and instead turn his attention to preparing for a landing on a runway. I’d have to be able to appropriately manage our speed and altitude to try to touch down safely.
We had hydraulic power to move the flight control surfaces, but we didn’t know if we’d be able to lower the landing gear and lock it into position. We might have had to use an alternate method—one in which gravity lowers the landing gear—and that would require another checklist for Jeff to attend to.
We would have had to be able to align the aircraft’s flight path exactly with a relatively short runway, touch down at an acceptable sink rate, and maintain directional control throughout the landing to make sure we didn’t run off the runway. Then we’d have to make sure the brakes would work, stopping before the end of the runway. Even then, would the airplane remain intact? There could be fire, smoke inhalation, and trauma injuries.
I also knew that if we turned toward LaGuardia and were unable to reach the airport, there would be no open stretch of water below us until Flushing Bay. And even if we were forced to ditch in that bay, near LaGuardia, and land in one piece, I feared that many on the aircraft would perish afterward. Rescuers there have access to just a few outboard motorboats, and it probably would have taken them too long to get to the aircraft, and too many trips to carry survivors to shore.
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
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, in retrospect, leaves me very grateful. For starters, he didn’t make things more complicated and difficult for Jeff and me by overloading us.
In emergencies, controllers are supposed to ask pilots basic questions: “How much fuel do you have remaining?” “What is the number of ‘souls on board’?” That would be a count of passengers and crew so rescue workers could know how many people to account for.
“I didn’t want to pester you,” Patrick later told me. “I didn’t want to keep asking, ‘What’s going on?’ I knew I had to let you fly the plane.”
Also, in order to save seconds and not have to repeat himself, he left the phone lines open when he called the controllers at other airports, so they could hear what he was saying to me and what I was saying to him. That way he wouldn’t have to repeat himself. The improvising he did was ingenious.
Patrick’s conscious effort not to disturb me allowed me to remain on task. He saw how quickly we were descending. He knew I didn’t have time to get him passenger information or to answer any questions that weren’t absolutely crucial.
The transcripts of our conversation also show how Patrick’s choice of phrasing was helpful to me. Rather than telling me what airport I had to aim for, he asked me what airport I wanted. His words let me know that he
