I fly for for a airline, what BOTH these pilots and flight crew did was very very good. Pilots know anytime your going down and its not going onto a runway its going to be pretty slim chance of survival. Landing in water is just as bad as hitting earth. I imagine his main concern was attempting to keep people alive on the plane and OFF the plane. Thats why he chose the river. So that he didn't run into a building or anything. This is our job, to make sure people get to their destination safely. But you wouldn't believe how often I get yelled at because of delays with weather or anything.
This continues even today -- below is a graphic image of an unprovoked shark attack on Gertrude Himmelfarb. Spoiler
live video fot he crash here: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009...5504174/coast-guard-video-of-plane-crash.html about 2 minutes in you can see the plane come in from the left. w/in 30 seconds they're getting out of the plane. watch the right wing and you can see a guy fall in the water and get pulled out. the first ferry boat is on the scene w/in five minutes...
<script src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/us/2009/01/17/vo.surveillance.plane.cnn" type="text/javascript"></script><noscript>Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a></noscript> awesome.
Yes that was pretty incredible too. I also noticed the pilot was skilled enough to put the plane down on the NY side of the Hudson so no one had to go to Hoboken.
interesting twist to this story- the same aircraft was reported to have had an emergency scare just two days earlier on the exact same route from NY to NC... http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/19/hudson.plane.folo/index.html
