YAHOO/AP: Crews hoist plane's engine from Hudson River

NEW YORK – The battered, twisted left engine of the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River was recovered Friday, after an eight-day struggle to find the wreckage and pull it from the murky water.

Using a large crane and rigging, salvage crews gently set the engine on a crane platform. Shards of metal and wiring hung from the engine, and a large portion of the outer shell appeared to be missing as it was lifted from the river bottom, 65 feet below the surface.

Immediately after the engine was set down, National Transportation Safety Board investigators began documenting and photographing it as part of their probe into the plane's remarkable landing.

EUREKALERT: Data from NYHOPS assists rescue efforts in Flight 1549 emergency

HOBOKEN, N.J. — With its unique location along the western bank of the Hudson River, Stevens Institute of Technology provided a dramatic front row venue for the emergency landing and successful rescue of U.S. Airways Flight 1549.

While emergency workers and ferryboat operators worked quickly to pluck the 150 passengers from the water's surface, Dr. Alan Blumberg, director of the Center for Maritime Systems at Stevens, was monitoring the situation under the Hudson River.

Using Stevens' New York Harbor Observation and Prediction System (NYHOPS), which gives a real-time assessment of ocean, weather, environmental, and vessel traffic conditions for various New York Metropolitan area waterways, Blumberg was able to give the New York Office of Emergency Management (OEM) accurate information that helped rescue workers on the scene.

DR. HELEN: “It was like one big family on that wing..."

Neo-Neocon has an interesting post up on the calmness of the passengers of flight 1549:

One cannot help but be impressed not only by the mere logistics of their survival as well as its improbability, but by the near-unanimity of the passengers’ stories of calm and mutual assistance.

One survivor, David Carlos, made the following observation:

“It was like one big family on that wing, everyone’s holding each other, this guy’s got that guy and this lady’s got that guy and no one wants to fall off,” Carlos said. “It was amazing, the human spirit, when it comes down to that everyone just got together, and was able to overcome and stay together, and everyone made it.”

SCOOP BUSINESS: Hudson River Landing: Importance Of Human Factors

Incidents such as the recent landing of the aircraft in the Hudson River after an apparent bird strike and subsequent double engine failure are one of the reasons why airlines throughout the world undertake human factors training for their pilots and air crew.

NY CITY FIRES: Hudson River between NY and NJ, 1/15/09

Location: Hudson River @ W50 st

15:34 hours
Phone Box 868 - Report of a plane in the water
Engs. 54, 34, 65
TL21, L4
Battalions 9
Rescue 1
Squad 18
Tactical Support 1
Marine 1 Alpha

15:35 hours
Also receiving reports of plane in the water @ Hudson River @ W83 st. Multiple calls received in the Bronx reporting a plane with engine fire. Queens in contact with LGA tower reporting a plane with a bird into the engine.
E76, TL22 assigned to W83 st

YAHOO/AP: Crew of downed plane to media: Cool it

WASHINGTON – The crew of the US Airways plane that landed in New York's Hudson River has asked the media to back off while the accident is being investigated.

Flight 1549's captain, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, first officer and co-pilot Jeff Skiles, and flight attendants Sheila Dail, Doreen Welsh and Donna Dent said in a joint statement Monday they want the media to "respect their desire to refrain from participating in interviews until further notice" while the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the accident.

The crew said they "wish to offer their sincere thanks and appreciation for the overwhelming support, praise and well wishes they have received from the public around the world since the events of last Thursday."

They said they are willing to do media interviews "when the time is right."

NY TIMES: Obama Invites Flight 1549 Pilot and Crew to Inauguration

Make room for a few more folks at the Inauguration.

Barack Obama has invited Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the hero pilot who landed the US Airways Airbus in the Hudson River last week. All 155 passengers and crew were safe.

Mr. Obama has also invited all five members of the crew of Flight 1549, which had taken off from LaGuardia and moments later made a controlled landing in the Hudson, to join the inaugural ceremonies.

As an added treat, the soon-to-be president has sent the pilot and crew an even more exclusive invitation — to come on board Air Force One whenever they have the chance.

YAHOO/AP: OMG!: Text messaging an important part of response

NEW YORK – Soon after US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport, Vallie Collins heard a boom and started smelling smoke. When the captain urged passengers to brace for impact, she immediately reached for her phone.

"I thought, 'OK, I'm not going to see my husband and three children again. And I just want them to know at this point, they were the No. 1 thought in my mind,'" she said.

She sent them a text message: "My plane is crashing." There was no time for the final three words she wanted to include: "I love you."

The crash-landing was one of few aviation accidents in which passengers were able to send frantic dispatches to loved ones before their plane went down.

USA TODAY: Passengers marvel they're alive

NEW YORK (AP) — The most terrifying moment came when Vallie Collins was caught in the back galley of the plane — water seeping in from exits that would open only a crack, and dozens of passengers bearing down on her, frantic to get out.

"Trying as hard as we could to push both of those doors," Collins said, recounting the moments after Flight 1549 touched down on the Hudson River on Thursday. "And the flight attendant said: 'We probably only have two minutes."'

YAHOO/AP: Crews hoist ditched plane from Hudson River

NEW YORK – Salvage crews hoisted a battle-scared US Airways jetliner from the Hudson River and onto a barge late Saturday, three days after the pilot of the crippled aircraft made what he told investigators was a split-second decision to attempt a water landing to avoid a possible "catastrophic" crash in a populated neighborhood.

Much of the top half of the aircraft appeared as though it might be ready for takeoff — a stark contrast with the charred-looking right wing, and the destroyed right engine, which appeared as though the outside had been peeled off.

NY TIMES: 1549 to Tower: ‘We’re Gonna End Up in the Hudson’

Just seconds after the first officer of US Airways Flight 1549, leaving La Guardia Airport and bound for Charlotte, N.C., pointed the nose of his jet into the sky, he noticed that there were birds on the right side — “in a perfect line formation.”

The plane’s captain, who had been busy watching the cockpit instruments, managing the radios and looking at charts, then looked up.

The windscreen, he told investigators, was filled with birds. The plane, at roughly 3,000 feet, was going at least 250 miles an hour. The captain’s first instinct, he said, was to duck.

Seconds later, flight attendants aboard the plane reported hearing a thud or a thump — a sound they had never heard before. The engines went quiet. And the plane’s captain, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, smelled something.

“Burning birds,” he told investigators.

TIME: Q&A: How to Survive a Plane Crash

A former executive producer at ABC's Good Morning America and a senior broadcast producer at NBC Nightly News, Ben Sherwood has written a new book, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life, that discusses, among other things, what you can do to survive a plane crash. Sherwood talked to TIME shortly after a US Airways flight made a crash landing in the Hudson River.

TIME: Learning from Flight 1549: How to Land on Water

Any landing you can swim away from, it seems, is a good one. All 155 passengers and crew of U.S. Airways flight 1549, which was forced to make an emergency water landing in the Hudson River on Jan. 15, survived — making it the rare accident that airlines and the NTSB might look forward to investigating. Water landings (attempts to bring an aircraft down in a controlled manner on water) and water crashes (which are anything but controlled) are somewhat of a mystery to the engineers who design, build and study aircraft safety features and procedures.

KOMO: Local pilot recalls his own emergency landing

SEATTLE -- When retired SeaTac pilot Al Haynes saw the US Airways plane plunge into the Hudson River, he knew the pilot had done his job and well. And few know more about emergency landings than Haynes.

Nearly 20 years ago, Haynes was piloting United Airlines Flight 232 when it cartwheeled onto the runway at Sioux City, Iowa.

NY DAILY NEWS: Now let's honor pilot who saved Flight 1549: Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger

Just when we really needed a miracle, we got one.

"Miracle on the Hudson," Gov. Paterson rightly called it.

Paterson was standing with the mayor and the police commissioner and the fire commissioner and other faces that have become too familiar to us in moments of tragedy.

They must have all been stricken with the same dread when word came that a passenger plane had gone down in the icy Hudson River on a day of killing cold.

The dread was shared by all the cops and firefighters and paramedics who raced to the scene, emergency lights garish in the frigid air.

And the rest of us could only pray and say, please, not another horror.

Oh no, we said.

Not in that icy, icy water on this cold, cold day.

Only after we learned that all aboard had escaped serious injury did we feel how much we needed this bit of luck when so much seems to be going wrong.

INDEPENDENT: A collision course with disaster for flight 1549 over New York City

As the crew on flight 1549 went through the safety drill, few of the 150 passengers would have been paying attention. Some may have even joked about the usefulness of a lifejacket in the unlikely event of a crash.

At 3.26pm yesterday, when the US Airways flight took off from New York's LaGuardia airport, many would have been settling back into their seats for a routine two-hour flight to Charlotte, Virginia, a journey safer than catching the bus or crossing the street.

But at 3.29pm, they found themselves freezing, in shock and floating in the middle of the Hudson River.

NY DAILY NEWS: A disaster that wasn't They hear a blast - but watch plane glide in for a perfect landing

It looked and sounded like impending disaster: A loud midair explosion, with a plane engine spewing flames above the city.

And then, as people watched from below in disbelief, US Airways Fight 1549 made an implausibly perfect touchdown in the middle of the Hudson River.

"It was quite a sight, and I can't believe I witnessed it," said Peter Chung, who stared slack-jawed from his 21st-story Times Square office as the plane wafted gently onto the river.