It’s been 10 years since office drones working on Manhattan’s West Side looked up from their Excel spreadsheets because a giant freaking airplane had just landed in the Hudson River.
More specifically, it’s been 10 years since Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was forced to land US Airways Flight 1549 in the river after the engines were knocked out in a rare and very unlucky encounter with a flock of Canada geese. Five minutes after taking off from LaGuardia airport, the Airbus plane hit the geese, narrowly missed hitting the George Washington Bridge, and landed on the river that separates New York and New Jersey. All 155 passengers and crew aboard survived. The geese, not so much.
Sully and his crew were instantly heralded as heroes, as were the captains of the seven NY Waterway ferries, U.S. Coast Guard, and the New York City Fire Department who boated out to the ditched plane, saving the passengers and crew who had filed out and lined up on the plane’s wings.
The anniversary will be marked this week with a reunion of the crew and passengers at the Carolinas Aviation Museum, which CN Traveler notes is next to the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, the very destination that Flight 1549 was heading to on that fateful day. The plane eventually made it there, as it now resides in the museum.
If you’re not near Charlotte, here are a few ways to relive the miracle:
- Metro collected some great stories from the rescue teams who helped ferry the passengers back to dry land.
- The New York Post spoke to a survivor of the crash.
- BuzzFeed collected harrowing photos of the crash, which left several people seriously injured.
If you are looking for other ways to mark the occasion, go feed some geese or eat a goose (depending on your feelings about who was at fault), read one of the many books on the landing, watch Sully (or read about everything Clint Eastwood got wrong in the film), or just watch Matt Damon’s greatest work ever in this clip from 30 Rock starting at 3:26. (“You know what a great pilot would have done? Not hit the birds. That’s what I do every day–not hit birds. Where’s my ticket to the Grammys?”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgsS_ub1VV4
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
