The reunions have been occurring, one by one, for the last couple of weeks. The doorbell rings and an unfamiliar face presents boxes filled with personal belongings. Many of them are ruined, but all are carefully wrapped in tissue paper and snuggled in sheets of fabric softener, as though their owners had died.
But their owners, the 150 passengers who rode US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River four months ago, are, of course, very much alive, and for each of them, it seems, there has been at least one item that matters far beyond its material value and is worth the unsettling memories its return arouses.
Lori Lightner’s strongest attachment was to her favorite pair of jeans. For Tracey Wolsko, it was the Our Lady of Lourdes medallion her husband had bought for her at St Patrick’s Cathedral. Carl Bazarian was happiest about recovering a set of car keys with the remote button to unlock the doors.
On the afternoon of Jan. 15, those items were packed in duffel bags or stuffed in purses and briefcases that were crammed in overhead bins or wedged under seats. Now, they are coming back.
“The smell was a little overpowering: Imagine 100 dryer sheets all at once,” Wolsko said, describing her first sensation upon opening a box of clothes that FedEx delivered on May 4. “But a lot of care and attention went into the packaging of it. It made a very emotional experience as positive as it could have been.”
Flight 1549, which was bound for Charlotte, North Carolina., is remembered as a cause for celebration because all the passengers and crew members survived after the plane’s pilot, Chesley Sullenberger III, expertly guided the crippled Airbus A320 into the river.
Yet the respectful formality in giving back items that the passengers had to leave on the plane is standard practice for Douglass Personal Effects Administrators, the company in El Segundo, California, that is managing the returns. When the company returns belongings, it is often to relatives of someone who has been killed in a crash.
So far, Douglass has been arranging the delivery of everything from Flight 1549 whose owner was clearly identified. It also is compiling a catalog of items that it could not link to a particular person for sorting out later, according to the company’s correspondence with passengers.
Passengers who have received some of their luggage say they are grateful, but not all of them are ready to absolve US Airways of responsibility for injuries, emotional distress and losses they claim to have suffered.
The airline’s insurance company, AIG Aviation Adjustment Services, has started offering each of the passengers US$10,000 in exchange for agreeing not to sue the airline, some passengers said. Lightner, who lives in Tega Cay, South Carolina, said she had received a two-page contract from the insurer but had not decided whether to sign it.
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