By JAMES BARRON
Published: January 15, 2009
The New York Times
Bill Zuhoski had settled into Seat 23A of US Airways Flight 1549 as it lifted off from La Guardia Airport and began climbing over the East River. Somewhere over the Bronx, the plane jerked, but Mr. Zuhoski figured it had run into some low-altitude turbulence.
Then a flight attendant asked for a fire extinguisher, saying there was a fire on board. The next thing Mr. Zuhoski knew, the pilot was telling the passengers to brace themselves, and he was locking arms with the passenger in Seat 23B.
A thought flashed through his mind: “How do you brace yourself for impact when you know your plane is about to crash?”
Other passengers on Flight 1549 — what was to have been a 2 hour, 13 minute flight to Charlotte, N.C. — had heard what sounded like an explosion. Elizabeth McHugh, a project manager for a company that installs information systems in hospitals, called it “a big bang.” Karin Hill, a college student on her way to Denver, called it “a loud thud.”
In the row ahead of Mr. Zuhoski, Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., saw the flames spurting out of the left engine. They were 3,200 feet above the Bronx.
In Seat 16A, another passenger, Fred Baretta, saw the same frightening scene. John Howell, a passenger from Charlotte, thought he understood: “We hit a flock of birds, a massive flock of birds,” he said.
What followed was perhaps even scarier. “There was just a lot of silence,” Mr. Baretta told CNN. The big jet’s engines had died, and the plane was now gliding ominously over one of the nation’s most heavily populated areas.
“The question was, how close to the buildings were we going to be?” said Ms. McHugh, the information-systems project manager.
But the flight crew still had some flying to do. Another passenger, Alberto Panero, said the jet began a turn.
“I figured, ‘Good, we are going back to the airport,’ ” he said on WABC-TV. “The next thing you know, he said on the intercom, ‘Brace for impact,’ and that’s when I knew that we were going down.” Some smelled smoke. Some smelled the tangy, troubling scent of jet fuel. And Mr. Zuhoski wondered where the plane was heading: “We didn’t know if we were hitting water or if we were hitting land,” he said.
He said there was a tremendous impact when the plane splashed down — his glasses were knocked off. But Ms. Hill, the college student, said that until water poured in, she did not realize the plane was in the water. “It felt like we were landing at the airport,” she said.
Many passengers rushed toward the back, thinking that was where the emergency exits were, Mr. Zuhoski said, but that part of the fuselage seemed to be sinking, and flooding, faster. “I started to get, you know, close to my neck underwater. I just thought I was going to drown right there.”
He stripped down to his underwear, the better to swim to safety. As the crowd thinned out, he crawled across the top of the seats and clambered out. He said he believed he was one of the last people off the plane, and he swam to a dinghy that was bobbing in the Hudson.
Everyone else in the dinghy had their clothes, and everyone was dry. They huddled, and each peeled off something to outfit him. Soon, they had all stepped off the plane and headed for shore — some to Manhattan, some to New Jersey, all relieved, all ready to replay the experience.
Sheikh Ali was waiting at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport for Matt Kane, a co-worker aboard Flight 1549, and did not know why it was late.
So Mr. Ali sent an e-mail message from his BlackBerry: “Where are you?”
Mr. Kane’s five-word response told the whole story: “I landed in the Hudson.”
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