‘Miracle on the Hudson’

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators are probing the Jan. 15 crash of a US Airways Airbus A-320 (N106US) into the icy Hudson River minutes after it departed LaGuarudia Airport for Charlotte, NC. It is believed that the twin-engine jetliner powered by CFM-56 turbofans, with 155 passengers and crew on board, suffered a bird strike. Federal officials said it might have flown through a large flock of Canada geese, sucking some into its engines. One passenger aboard US Airways Flight 1549 suffered two broken legs, but no other serious injuries were reported. After the stricken airliner made an extraordinary emergency water landing, a flotilla of commercial vessels quickly arrived on the scene to pluck shivering passengers, many holding onto the plane’s wings, to safety. The plane had suffered “a double bird strike,” one of the pilots told an air traffic controller at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control. Rory Kay, who is executive air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association is quoted as saying” it's "quite rare, but certainly not unheard of," for birds to shut down two engines of a plane.”