A tragedy yet an inspiration.
I was driving when the ditching of this flight came on the radio as breaking news. Like many, I waiting with anticipation and imatience until they announced that all passengers and crew were able to get off without numerous major injuries and everyone has their life.
A tear started when that was announced.
On the radio they had several pilots call in. Some were current and ex military pilots and some were retired commercial pilots that have flown the same make/model of airplane. One thing they all said was how remarkable it was that it landed successfully in the water. That the pilot on the flight did an outstanding and even miraculous thing. From what they said it is not just difficult to do a water landing but there are several factors involved, especially airspeed at the time of engine failure. I won’t get into relating all of it because I don’t want to mess up facts, as it was, I was driving at the time this came on and didn’t take notes. The one thing that is extremely impressive to me is that the pilot was able to “east” the plane into the water and be steady and not touch a wing to the water. I have seen videos of planes touching a wing to the water and it is not a pretty sight.
When sporadic comments were being related by survivors that were on the flight, one passenger had said that the passengers were all helping and encouraging others and most people were relatively calm and focused on simply getting out…no one seemed to panic.
A tear came to my eye then as well. I’m a woman so you know we get emotional but to me this was very heartwarming. Being that a lot of the time it seems that everyone is just out for themselves…like people fighting over christmas toys at Toys R Us and shooting each other. Here we had what was a disaster situation and people all helped each other. No one was trampled or left behind. When people started to panic, other passengers calmed them down enough to get everyone out safely. I think that is very important as panicing never helps…and makes things worse.
It warms me that there was such a display of caring for others and we are not hearing a lot about people shoving others aside to save themselves and things like that.
I think in the case of US Airways Flight 1549, the crew was astounding and so were the passengers….and so were the rescue efforts.
