Sully

by Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, III

  The cockpit windows on the Airbus A320 are large, and as I looked out the front, I saw the birds were everywhere, filling the windscreen. It was not unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I thought later that I should have tried to duck in case the windshield cracked from the birds’ impact, but there was no time.

  The cockpit voice recorder captured my interchange with Jeff and the sounds in the cockpit:

  Sullenberger (3:27 and 10.4 seconds): “Birds!”

  Skiles (3:27:11): “Whoa!”

  (3:27.11.4): Sound of thumps/thuds, followed by shuddering sound.

  Skiles (3:27:12): “Oh, shit!”

  Sullenberger (3:27:13): “Oh, yeah.”

  (3:27:13): Sound similar to decrease in engine noise/frequency begins.

  Skiles (3:27:14): “Uh-oh.”

  As the birds hit the plane, it felt like we were being pelted by heavy rain or hail. It sounded like the worst thunderstorm I’d ever heard back in Texas. The birds struck many places on the aircraft below the level of the windshield, including the nose, wings, and engines. The thuds came in rapid succession, almost simultaneously but a fraction of a fraction of a second apart.

  I would later learn that Sheila and Donna, still strapped into their seats for takeoff, also felt the thuds.

  “What was that?” Sheila asked.

  “Might be a bird strike,” Donna told her.

  I had hit birds three or four times in my career and they had never even dented the plane. We’d make note of the strike in our maintenance logbook, make sure every piece of the airplane was unscathed, and that was it. I’ve long been aware of the risks, of course. About eighty-two thousand wildlife strikes—including deer, coyotes, alligators, and vultures—have been reported to the FAA since 1990. Researchers estimate that this is just a fifth of the actual number, since the great majority of strikes are never formally reported by pilots. Studies have shown that about 4 percent of strikes result in substantial damage to aircraft. In the past twenty years, wildlife strikes have resulted in 182 deaths and the destruction of 185 aircraft, according to the National Wildlife Research Center in Sandusky, Ohio.

  At that moment on Flight 1549, a mere 2,900 feet above New York, I wasn’t contemplating these statistics, however. What I focused on, extremely quickly, was that this situation was dire. This wasn’t just a few small birds hitting the windshield or slapping hard against a wing and then falling to earth.

  We were barely over 200 knots, that’s 230 miles an hour, and immediately after the bird strike, I felt, heard, and smelled evidence that birds had entered the engines—both engines—and severely damaged them.

  I heard the noise of the engines chewing themselves up inside, as the rapidly spinning, finely balanced machinery was being ruined, with broken blades coming loose. I felt abnormal, severe vibrations. The engines were protesting mightily. I’ll never forget those awful, unnatural noises and vibrations. They sounded and felt BAD! And then I smelled a distinct odor—burning birds. The telltale air was being drawn from the engines into the cabin.

  Within a few seconds, Jeff and I felt a sudden, complete, and bilaterally symmetrical loss of thrust. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in a cockpit before. It was shocking and startling. There’s no other way to describe it. Without the normal engine noises, it became eerily quiet. Donna and Sheila would later tell me that in the cabin, it was as quiet as a library. The only remaining engine noise was a kind of rhythmic rumbling and rattling, like a stick being held against moving bicycle spokes. It was a strange windmilling sound from broken engines.

  If you’ve got more than 40,000 pounds of thrust pushing your 150,000-pound plane uphill at a steep angle and the thrust suddenly goes away—completely—well, it gets your attention. I could feel the momentum stopping, and the airplane slowing. I sensed that both engines were winding down. If only one engine had been destroyed, the plane would be yawing, turning slightly to one side, because of the thrust in the still-working engine. That didn’t happen. So I knew very quickly that this was an unparalleled crisis.

  If we had lost one engine, we’d have maintained control of the airplane and followed the procedures for that situation. We’d have declared an emergency and told the controller about the loss of an engine, and received permission to land immediately at the most appropriate nearby airport. Then we would have told the flight attendants and passengers what was going on. It would be an emergency, but we would have almost certainly landed safely, probably at the airport in Newark, where the runways are longer than at LaGuardia.

  The failure of even one engine had never happened to me before. Engines are so reliable these days that it is possible for a professional airline pilot to go an entire career without losing even one. I was headed for that perfect record before Flight 1549.

  Sullenberger (3:27:15): “We got one roll—both of ’em rolling back.”

  (3:27:18): Rumbling sound begins.

  Sullenberger (3:27:18.5): “Ignition, start.”

  Sullenberger (3:27:21.3): “I’m starting the APU [auxiliary power unit].”

  Within eight seconds of the bird strike, realizing that we were without engines, I knew that this was the worst aviation challenge I’d ever faced. It was the most sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling I had ever experienced.

  I knew immediately and intuitively that I needed to be at the controls and Jeff needed to handle the emergency checklist.

  “My aircraft,” I said to him at 3:27:23.2.

  “Your aircraft,” he responded.

  This important protocol ensured that we both knew who was flying.

  In the more common emergencies we train for, such as the loss of one engine, we would have time to go through our checklists and mull over solutions. In those cases, it is usually optimal for the first officer to fly so the captain can think about the situation, make decisions, and give direction.

  Even in those early seconds, I knew this was an emergency that called for thinking beyond what’s usually considered appropriate. As a rush of information came into my head, I had no doubts that it made the most sense for me to take the controls.

  The reasons were clear to me. For one, I had greater experience flying the A320. Jeff was much newer to this type of plane. Also, all the landmarks I needed to see in order to judge where we might go were on my side of the airplane.

  I also knew that since Jeff had just trained on the A320, he had more recent experience practicing the emergency procedures. He could more quickly find the right checklist out of about 150 checklists in our Quick Reference Handbook (QRH). He was the right man for that job.

  After I took control of the plane, two thoughts went through my mind, both rooted in disbelief: This can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen to me.

  I was able to force myself to set those thoughts aside almost instantly. Given the gravity of this situation, I knew that I had seconds to decide on a plan and minutes to execute it.

  I was aware of my body. I could feel an adrenaline rush. I’m sure that my blood pressure and pulse spiked. But I also knew I had to concentrate on the tasks at hand and not let the sensations in my body distract me.

  Jeff seemed to be equally on task. He was businesslike, focused on what he had to do. He would later say his brain felt swelled “like when you have a bad head cold,” but to me at the time, his voice and demeanor seemed unaffected. We both were very aware of how terrible this was. We just didn’t waste time verbalizing this awareness to each other.

  I’ve always kept in mind something said by astronaut John Young just before launch on a space mission. Asked if he was worried about the risks, or about the potential for catastrophe, he replied: “Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world, knowing they’re going to light the bottom, and doesn’t get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation.”

  In our case, both Jeff and I clearly understood the gravity of our situation, and we were very concerned. Success would come
if, at each juncture in the seconds ahead, we could solve the next problem thrown at us. Despite everything—the ruined plane, the sensations in my body, the speed with which we had to act—I had confidence that we could do it.

  THERE ARE three general rules about any aircraft emergency. We learn them in our earliest lessons as pilots. And for those of us who served in the military, these rules are codified.

  Maintain aircraft control.

  Always make sure someone is flying the airplane, and is focused on maintaining the best flight path. No matter what else happens, you have to remember to fly the plane first, because if you don’t, bad things can happen quickly.

  There will be impulses to do other things: getting your mind around the particulars of the emergency, troubleshooting, finding the right checklists, talking to air traffic control. All of these things need to be done, but not at the expense of flying the airplane.

  Analyze the situation and take proper action.

  Through our training, we know the actions we should consider depend upon what systems have failed and how much time and fuel we have to deal with the situation. There are specific procedural steps, and we need to know them and be ready to take them.

  Land as soon as conditions permit.

  This means we have to factor in weather and runway conditions, the wind, the length and width of the runway, the emergency and rescue equipment available at the particular airport where a landing might be attempted, and all sorts of other factors. It is important to land quickly but with due consideration. How well will emergency crews at the closest airport be able to help? Does it make more sense to fly to another airport with better weather or facilities?

  THOSE ARE the three basic rules. And there is a variation on these rules that pilots find easy to remember: “Aviate, navigate, communicate.”

  Aviate: Fly the plane. Navigate: Make sure your flight path is appropriate and that you’re not flying off course. Communicate: Let those on the ground help you, and let those on the plane know what might be necessary to save their lives.

  On Flight 1549, Jeff and I were doing all of these things almost simultaneously. We had no choice. That also meant we had to make sure that higher-priority tasks weren’t suffering as we worked to accomplish the lower-priority tasks.

  The first thing I did was lower the plane’s nose to achieve the best glide speed. For all of us on board to survive, the plane had to become an efficient glider.

  In the days that followed the Hudson landing, there was speculation in the media that all of my training as a glider pilot thirty-five years earlier had helped me on Flight 1549. I have to dispel that notion. The flight characteristics and speed and weight of an Airbus are completely different from the characteristics of the gliders I flew. It’s a night-and-day difference. So my glider training was of little help. Instead, I think what helped me was that I had spent years flying jet airplanes and had paid close attention to energy management. On thousands of flights, I had tried to fly the optimum flight path. I think that helped me more than anything else on Flight 1549. I was going to try to use the energy of the Airbus, without either engine, to get us safely to the ground . . . or somewhere.

  On Flight 1549, as we descended and I watched the earth come toward us faster than usual, the passengers did not immediately know how dire this was. They weren’t flying the airplane, and they didn’t have the training. Most probably, they couldn’t put all these disparate cues into a worldview that would tell them the magnitude of our problem. The nature of the emergency and the extreme time compression forced Jeff and me to focus our attention on the highest-priority tasks, so there was no time to make any verbal contact with those in the cabin, even the flight attendants.

  In the cockpit, Jeff and I never made eye contact, but from the few words he spoke and his overall demeanor and body language, I had the clear sense that he was not panicked. He was not distracted. He was working quickly and efficiently.

  Sullenberger (3:27:28): “Get the QRH . . . Loss of thrust on both engines.”

  Jeff grabbed the Quick Reference Handbook to find the most appropriate procedure for our emergency. The QRH book is more than an inch thick, and in previous editions, it had helpful numbered tabs sticking out of the edge of it. That made it easier for us to find the exact page we needed. You could hold it in your left hand and use it like an address book, grazing over the numbered tabs with your right hand before turning to the tab for, say, Procedure number 27.

  In recent years, however, in a cost-cutting move, US Airways had begun printing these booklets without the numbered tabs on the edge of the pages. Instead, the number of each procedure was printed on the page itself, requiring pilots to open the pages and thumb through them to get to the right page.

  On Flight 1549, as Jeff turned quickly through the pages of his QRH without tabs, it likely took him a few extra seconds to find the page he needed with the proper procedure. I told this to the National Transportation Safety Board in my testimony given in the days after the accident.

  We were over the Bronx at that point and I could see northern Manhattan out the window. The highest we ever got was just over three thousand feet, and now, still heading northwest, we were descending at a rate of over one thousand feet per minute. That would be equivalent to an elevator descending two stories per second.

  Twenty-one and a half seconds had passed since the bird strike. I needed to tell the controller about our situation. I needed to find a place to put the plane down quickly, whether back at LaGuardia or somewhere else. I began a left turn, looking for such a place.

  “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Mayday! . . .”

  That was my message—the emergency distress signal—to Patrick Harten, the controller, just after 3:27:32.9. My delivery was businesslike, but with a sense of urgency.

  Patrick never heard those words, however, because while I was talking, he was making a transmission of his own—to me. Once someone keys his microphone, he can’t hear what’s being said to him on the same frequency. While Patrick was giving me a routine direction—“Cactus fifteen forty-nine, turn left heading two seven zero”—my “Mayday” message was going no farther than our cockpit.

  I didn’t know that Patrick hadn’t heard me and that I hadn’t heard him. This is a regular and problematic issue in communications between controllers and pilots. When two people transmit simultaneously, they not only block each other, but they also sometimes prohibit others nearby from hearing certain transmissions. “Anti-blocking” devices have been invented that allow aircraft radios to detect when someone else is transmitting. That way, once a radio senses another transmission, it can prevent your radio from transmitting so you don’t block someone else. We could certainly use such devices or similar technology in our cockpits. All pilots have stories. There have been times when a pilot will bump his radio’s button, and for a few minutes, those of us in planes on the same frequency hear only background noise from that pilot’s cockpit. We can’t hear the controller. It is a potentially hazardous situation that has not been resolved because airlines and other operators have chosen not to adopt anti-blocking technology, and the FAA has not mandated it.

  Patrick’s transmission lasted about four seconds, and when he released his transmit button, he heard the rest of my transmission: “. . . This is, uh, Cactus fifteen thirty-nine. Hit birds. We’ve lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards LaGuardia.”

  I had gotten the flight number wrong. Later, when I heard the tape, I detected a higher stress level in my voice. My voice quality was slightly raspy, slightly higher pitched. No one else might have noticed, but I could hear it.

  PATRICK, A thirty-four-year-old controller, had worked many thousands of flights in his ten years on the job, and had a reputation for being careful and diligent.

  He had assisted a few jets with failures of one engine, though none to the point where the plane had become a glider. He worked to get these flights back to the ground as quickly as possible, and in each case, the planes lande
d without incident. Like other controllers, he took pride in the fact that he had never failed in his attempts to help a plane in distress get safely to a runway.

  In Patrick’s previous emergencies, he had remained calm and acted intelligently.

  Once, he had a plane coming in from overseas. There was bad weather that day, and the plane had been held in holding patterns. Eventually, it had enough fuel to last just thirty more minutes. The plane was almost twenty minutes from the airport. If a new weather problem developed, or there was a further traffic delay, the plane could run out of fuel. Knowing there was no margin for error, Patrick had to pull another aircraft from its final approach, and slot in the plane with low fuel. He oversaw the rearranging of a jigsaw puzzle in the sky, and was able to help the plane land without incident.

  About fifteen times in his career, Patrick had pilots tell him that their planes had just hit birds. The worst bird strike he had ever handled before Flight 1549 involved a cracked windshield. Patrick had helped that airplane return to LaGuardia safely.

  Patrick certainly had his share of experiences with emergencies. But like almost every controller working in the world today, he had never been in a situation where he was guiding a plane that had zero thrust capability.

  In the case of Flight 1549, Patrick knew he had to act quickly and decisively. He made an immediate decision to offer us LaGuardia’s runway 13, which was the closest to our current position. At that moment, we were still heading away from LaGuardia and descending rapidly.

  He made no comment, of course, about the seriousness of the condition of our plane. He just responded.

  “OK, uh,” he radioed back to me. “You need to return to LaGuardia. Turn left heading of, uh, two two zero.”

  “Two two zero,” I acknowledged, because I knew all my options lay to my left. In the left turn, I would have to choose one, and the option I chose would determine the ultimate heading I would fly.

  From the cockpit voice recorder: