'Brace yourself for impact'

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

There'd been a light dusting of snow at LaGuardia earlier, but as the US Airways airbus taxied for take-off, the north-south runway was dry and bare. One-hundred and fifty passengers and a crew of five were leaving behind a frigid New York day --temperatures in the 20s -- for Charlotte, N.C..

3:26 p.m.: US Airways 1549 was wheels-up for what would be about a five-minute flight. The twin-engined jet climbed out of the city to the north. The pilot began cranking the customary left-hand turn.

3:27 p.m.: A minute in, it happened. They ran into a flock of birds, geese probably, sucked into both engines.

Jeff Kolodjay, off with his buddies for a golfing trip to Myrtle Beach, was on a window seat behind the left wing. He heard a bang: “Just a loud explosion off the left engine, smoke, fire, everything, like strong gasoline, and I was sitting in 22A, I could see it, it was right in front of me. I could see fire passing right through my window a little bit.”

Bill Zuhoski from Long Island remembered a sudden jerk: "It just felt like turbulence. It got everybody nervous for a second like any turbulence would. Nobody thought anything of it until we started to slowly go down.”

Up front at 1600 feet and sinking, the pilot had asked the tower for an emergency landing back at LaGuardia but the oxygen-starved engines were losing power-- turbine blades shredding.

The pilot looked over at New Jersey. A landing strip. "What airport is that?” he radioed.

Controller: "That's Teterboro,” a field for private planes. The pilot said he was going for it but apparently he didn't have enough plane left under him.

Passenger Joe Hart: "I actually thought we were headed for Newark, not less than a couple minutes later the right engine cut out, left engine cut out. I looked out that window and noticed we were below rooftops of Manhattan and I said, ‘This is not a good sign, we're not making Newark.’”

The pilot was lining up for a water-ditching, smack in the middle of the Hudson River.

Passenger Vince Spiro: "I [can’t] repeat what I said to the guy next to me. I said ‘You gotta be (pause) kidding me....’"

Zuhoski: "Everyone knew it was real. The people sitting next to me, we were interlocked with our arms and then you just heard the pilot: ‘Brace yourself for impact.’ How do you brace yourself for impact when your plane's about to crash?”

In the condo and office towers on both sides of the Hudson, startled witnesses saw this scene -- an eerily 9-11 sight, a low flying commercial jetliner.

This is some of the only video so far of the crippled plane, still airborne, minutes from coming down.

Calls started coming into 911.

911 Caller:  “A big jet was going down into the Hudson and it pulled back up. And I'm telling you this plane was way too low.”

Christian Martin--a former Dateline producer-- was in his Manhattan office high above 50th Street when he looked toward the river.

Christian Martin: “I saw a plane landing in a very controlled fashion going pretty slow. Just laid down absolutely perfect like this dead in the middle. And it was so controlled that it took a moment to realize that this was an emergency crash landing.”

This animation is based on what Martin said he saw. The airbus making a controlled descent,

Martin: “It was amazing as the plane touched down, it just touched down. It sat up high on the water for a good long time.”

The Airbus came to rest and to the non-pilots--non-engineers among us-- miraculously stayed intact, floating, a medium-sized jet now a boat following the tide out as it moved south on the Hudson River. “Miraculous” was about to be a word used over and over.

Inside the plane's cabin, Brad Wentzell was struck by the stillness.

MORE FROM NEWSMAKERS

Newsmakers Section Front

Secrets Of The Lost Symbol Read an excerpt from 'The Lost Symbol' The Michael Jackson Tapes Michael Jackson: ‘I am scared of my father’ Back to Woodstock Kidnapped Heiress: The Patty Hearst Story On tour with Taylor Swift See behind-the-scenes web videos of Taylor Swift Slideshow: Concert photos of Taylor Swift Kids of 'Slumdog': Where are they now? Newsmakers Section Front   Add Newsmakers headlines to your news reader: