jim acosta. i ll see you again next weekend. good night. mar-a-lago. welcome to the whole story . i m anderson cooper. last week at tokyo s haneda airport, a plane collided with a smaller aircraft. five crewmembers on the coast guard plane died. but amazingly, all 379 people on the airbus survived. they were safely evacuated before the plane was engulfed in flames. investigation into what happened is still under way. it got us thinking about utah miraculous story of survival that happened 15 years ago this month. us airways flight 1549 took off from new york s la guardia airport heading to charlotte, north carolina. there were 150 passengers on board and 5 crew members, including the pilot, chap tain chesley sully sullenberger. it should have been a quick two-hour flight. but soon after takeoff 2 plane collided with a flock of geese. the plane went down. captain sully headed towards the hudson river for an emergency landing. his decisiveness saved the lives of all 158 peop
captain cool himself chesley sullllenberger, sully!y! i donon t think t there is anybody inin the w whorld who dodoesn t knowow who sully is.s. i receceived a a call frorom presidident of thehe united sta president george w. bush to congratulate me. and hour and a half after that i got a call from president-elect obama. so we were all off to the inauguration. just that next monday. good evening. tonight joining us for another special hour, the captain and crew of us airways flight 1549. i feel like i d been chosen by circumsmstance. i remembeber in the v very beginning,g, we got a fax. itit was like e a hand-w-writte. and it j just said america ad a a wiwin. thank yoyou. anand that came throrough on oux machine. i have no idea who it was from or how they got our fax number. mail was being delivered to our house. our mailman would come at night, and he would put those bins that
it s been a whilele s since on-c-camera intrtroduce. so i in this capacity.y. yeaeah. w well, he has done them, bu we haven t t had anyonone inin home. > in the hohome. s so this is s probably t tht time in ten years. remembmber when the airlines us to have real silverware? anand i also felt t it is s muc persrsonal if we re home, rathe thanan sitting somewherere else. i hadad w wanted to f fly si was 5 5 years old.d. and this i is onone of t the ais i flew when i had first gotten my private pilot license. my first passenger was my mom. and in my flight l logbook, , i a ststar by thatat flight, b be it was spepecial. i think about his mom a all e time. one of thehe funny stories his momentum liked to tell is he was a handndful as a t toddler. and ththe sundayay school teaca brouought him ouout to h his moy
cocounselor as well as a parart. > thank youou. > so,o, w where is that framg that youou just t had? oh,h, here we go. yeah. ththere s anotother one. o oh, that t s bebeautiful. and thihis one. anand here s anonother one. the e flight and t the aftermrmath and mymy f father s suicide,e, they are e forced gr. yoyou know, ththere s alwaways weight of that trauma a that is still therere. wewe just t have t to o learn h mananage it. i wouldndn t be who o i am now ththis been difffferent. l let s see w what else we g. anand then here,e, i am as i h just entntered the u united sta air force academy as a frereshm. ththis is during t the basic trtraining sumummer, obviously.. lookok at how shshort my haiair
well, i ve heard ththat rerecording mamany times of the traffic control communications and it t takes me riright back that moment. > i was sittingng in seat 1 . i w was in 12a.a. 1 12f. 2 26d. s seat 15d. i was sitting on t tonight firi row w of the plane. so i i watch eveverybody go o b. when wewe g got on the e flfe were they were telling us this is a cocompletely f full l flight. we re behihind schedulule. sit dodown.. we took off, anand i was kin of dozing in and out. i couould see t the froront engine. i saw a gray cloud. i i had just reachehed unded seseat to pupull out a book tha was going to read on t the flig, anand thatat s when i remembere hearining the thudud..