you call that defense?! come on! [ female announcer ] watch live tv anywhere. the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. commercial jets are not designed to land on the water. it s dangerous and potentially deadly. so why would a pilot take such a risk? as we ve seen, sometimes they simply have little choice. in one case, a giant 767 is felled by terrorists, hijackers who don t care if they or anyone else on board lives or dies. the pilot does his best to put the plane down safely but the impact kills 125 people out of 175 on board. over the pacific ocean, another flight has a mechanical problem and ends up in a virtual
and the sea is very angry. the amount of whitecaps. the swells were quite enormous. and i had heavy winds. all of captain dewitt s years of experience are about to come into play. as he descends, he eyeballs the 10 to 15-foot waves and chooses one, knowing full well he has to land on top of it rather than into it or the plane could break into pieces. time of impact, 3:49 p.m. unlike us airways flight 1549, which skimmed across the top of the hudson river, this plane bobs in and out of the waves. incredibly, captain dewitt says the plane continues to function while in the water. the aircraft was rolling to the left and was at already a high degree bank, probably around 30 to 35 degrees. all i did was start flying it like i would in the air, and it
the coast guard crew is convinced no one could have survived this. but then, movement. within seconds, the front doors are thrown open and life rafts thrown out. in the midst of chaos, joann is handed off to a coast guardsman and reunited with her mother. another moment caught on camera. when i saw myself being lifted up out of the life raft by one of the coast guards, i could picture them just smiling and just being really loving. and then seeing myself on the video put my arm around one of the coast guards, when i saw my mother looking at me, and i reached out for her, to see my mother on the video and to see that stressed look, i ve got to say that just really made me think about what happened and what she had to go through. captain ogg is the last person off the plane, which sinks 21 minutes after hitting
we are all dead people now. let me do it my way. and decide i don t know how they did it. disengaged the autopilot. disengaged it? he did. from this from that control. right. and then, i disconnected the autopilot and then i had to start flying it myself. in the cabin, passengers start to panic. when the pilot first made the announcement that the plane was out of fuel in one engine and running out in the other, the plane just broke into pandemonium and then we heard passengers in the back who panicked and they all inflated their life jackets. they all put them on and inflated them. so you could hear this happen? you hear the bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. in the cockpit the captain tries as hard as he can to put the plane he nicknamed zulu down onto the water. you have to hold it. hold it, hold it. okay, zulu. you are going to make it. you are going to make it.
rolled out, level. and the minute it rolled out level i sort of popped to the surface just like a cork. not all have survived the impact. but those who do escape into shark-infested waters. it s an hour and a half before rescue helicopters begin arriving on the scene. because the plane s p.a. system was not working, the pilot never had a chance to verbally warn passengers to put on their seat belts or brace for impact. 40 of 63 survived. according to the ntsb, fewer lives would have been lost had passengers received adequate warning. of the 23 who don t make it, two are children. to this day it s difficult for the pilot to come to terms with the loss of life. well, the story itself, not very difficult, except if i let my mind wander to the people i lost, yeah. the two kids i lost back there.