A federal safety panel issued more than two dozen recommendations related to the airliner that ditched into the Hudson River after colliding with geese last year. Those include making aircraft engines more bird-resistant, equipping every passenger plane with life vests and requiring enough accessible life rafts for all passengers.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was entirely due to chance that US Airways Flight 1549 had such equipment on board on Jan. 15 last year, when the Airbus A320 collided with a flock of Canada geese.
The plane had just taken off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport and was bound for Charlotte, North Carolina. It was not required under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations to have equipment for water landings on board. Only planes flying more than 80km from shore must have such equipment, the board said.
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made a split-second decision to glide the airliner with 155 people aboard into the river rather than risk crashing into a densely populated area by trying to reach an airport.
When the plane hit the water, there was a rupture in the fuselage near the tail and water gushed in. Everyone on board survived, but it was a close call.
Ferries and rescue craft nearby were able to remove survivors quickly, but if the passengers on the rafts had been forced into the 5ºC water it’s possible many of them would have suffered “cold shock” — a phenomenon that can lead to drowning within as few as five minutes, the board said.
The board also recommended making life vests easier for passengers to retrieve and put on correctly. Only 33 passengers reported putting on a life vest and only four completed fastening their vest.
Another key recommendation was that the FAA examine whether population increases of large bird species like the Canada goose have increased the likelihood of collisions.
In November, a Frontier Airlines Airbus A319 en route to Denver collided with a flock of snow geese, forcing the shutdown of one engine and significantly damaging the other. The plane returned to Kansas City for an emergency landing.
If there are more collisions with large birds, the board wants the FAA to revise its certification standards for aircraft engines to ensure they can withstand impacts with larger birds. It also wants the FAA to examine the way it tests the ability of small and medium-sized aircraft engines to reflect operating conditions at low altitudes, which is where most bird strikes occur.
It may be time “for another leap forward in engine standards,” board chairman Deborah Hersman told reporters.
Sullenberger’s decision to ditch into the river “provided the highest probability that the accident would be survivable,” the board said.
Documents released by the board indicate the plane could have made it back to LaGuardia — barely. However, a successful return would have required Sullenberger to make an immediate decision with little or no time to assess the situation.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS