"We're gonna be in the Hudson"

If you'd asked me one year ago if a person could land an Airbus A320 with 155 people on board in a river without killing anyone I would have said that it was absolutely impossible.

Now, I'm no pilot, but I do have a degree in Avaition Management and therefore had quite a few classes dealing with flight, crew resource management, crashes and and a varity of subjects avaition related. I've seen the news, photos and the following incredible animation of US Air flight 1549 landing in the Hudson and I STILL have an increadibly hard time beliving that they actually pulled it off. The pilots certainly deserve TONS of credit for the way this turned out, but I'm convinced that they weren't the ones determining the outcome that day.

I just found this today and had to share... Here's an amazing 3D animation of US Air flight 1549.





There is a bunch more info HERE.

One note that really stood out to me was this line:

"The Branta Canadensis [Canada Goose] has an average mass of about 3700 grams. At the time of impact, the closure rate between Flight 1549 and the flock of birds was approximately 120 m/s [meters per second]. The kinetic energy dissipated by collision with a single bird would be approximately 27,000 Joules. This is about the same amount of energy as a 2,000 pound car traveling 17 mph."

That's just ONE bird. If you've ever tried to push a car to get it rolling at just 2 mph you know how much force is required Also, for comparison, car bumper tests are commonly done at 5 mph. This was a HUGE ammount of force to hit an entire flock of Canada Geese.

Wow. Those guys did an amazing bit of flying that day.