caribbe caribbean. it s one of the trickiest places in the world to land a plane, especially a 747 as the video shows. the postage size runway is perilously close to the beach. they can reach out and touch the jets as they come out above their heads. if it were to end up on the beach full of people, it would be catastrophic. to be that close to that large of an airplane moving that quickly, i guess the overturned the word awesome comes to mind. aside from physical limitations of the runway, there s also a mountain range blang eting one side of the airport. and if all that isn t enough, there s that unpredictable caribbean weather. all those factors combined are about to turn a routine flight into a nightmare. for the first time after four decades, the pilot of that flight, captain due wit, is
minutes to impact. the air traffic controllers using the wrong flight number try and guide the plane to an airport. yout to try to land we may end up in the hudson. 1549 it s going to be runway 31. unable. just north of the george washington bridge, the captain aligns the air bus a 320ith the hudson river. he passes the bridge to the east and continues due south. i looked out the window, so we were below the rooftops of manhattan. this is not a good sign. we re not making newark. did sully look at you and say we re going in the water. i think it was more that was the only option we had. we weren t going to make it to an airport. that was the only open spot that we saw. if a pilot is forced to ditch, the faa has recommendations for how to do so. it all comes down to when and
that fuel critical state is an error on the part of the crew. there s one thing that cannot be taken away from me and i ll not let anyone take that away from me is the responsibility. i take that. i wore the four stripes. i made all of the decisions. someone along the line i should have been sharp enough to know regardless than to get myself into a situation like that. to this day i still haven t found where i could have done anything better. the captain was fired from his job six weeks after the ditches. he says no official reason was given. he never flew as a pilot again. coming up next, terrorism in the skies and another dramatic ditches. this one actually caught on camera. first kid
degree bank, 30 to 35 degrees. all i did was start flielg it like i would in the air and it rolled out, levelled and 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 rescuers arrive on the scene. the pilot never had a chance to verbally warn passengers to put on their seat belt or brace for payment pact. 40 of 62 survive. fewer lives would have been lost if passengers had received adequate warning. of the 23 who don t make it, two are children. to the day it s difficult for the pilot to come to terms with the loss of life. the story itself not very
jackers fight the pilot for control of the plane. i said, guys, this is finished now. we are all dead people now. let me do it my way. and that s i don t know how they did it. they disengaged the auto pilot. disengaged it. he did. from this control here. that control. and i disconnected the auto pilot and i had to start flying it myself. in the cabin the passengers started to panic. when the pilot made the announcement that the plane was out of fuel in one engine and running out in the other, the plane broke into pandemonium then we heard passengers in the back then they all inflated their life jackets, they put them on and inflighted them. you heard that. pop pop pop pop in. in the cockpit the captain tries to put the plane down safely into the water.