CNN: Marines sack 4 over deadly California plane crash

(CNN) -- The Marine Corps has sacked four top officers of a California-based fighter squadron over the December crash of a fighter jet that slammed into a San Diego neighborhood, the service announced Tuesday.

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.

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: 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.

NY TIMES: All 155 Escape Jet’s Plunge Into Hudson

A US Airways jetliner with 155 people aboard lost power in both engines, possibly from striking birds, after taking off from La Guardia Airport on Thursday afternoon. The pilot ditched in the icy Hudson River and all on board were rescued by a flotilla of converging ferries and emergency boats, the authorities said.

CNN: Airplane crash-lands into Hudson River; all aboard reported safe

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A US Airways plane with more than 150 people aboard went down in the Hudson River on Thursday after taking off from LaGuardia Airport, and everyone aboard apparently got off the plane alive, officials said.

MSNBC: N.Y. jet crash called 'miracle on the Hudson'

NEW YORK - A US Airways jetliner crashed into the frigid Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after a flock of birds apparently disabled both its engines, but rescuers pulled the more than 150 passengers and crew members into boats before the plane sank.

After boats rushed to the rescue, the Federal Aviation Administration said that all passengers on US Airways Flight 1549 were off the plane and safe.

"We've had the miracle on 34th Street for some time and now I believe we've had a miracle on the Hudson," New York Gov. David Paterson said in a news conference Thursday evening.

"We do not believe there are any serious injuries," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, noting some passengers were taken to hospitals in New Jersey. "The pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and getting the passengers out."

CNN: Authorities: Pilot who bailed from plane under securities probe

(CNN) -- A man whose financial management business is under investigation faked a life-or-death emergency in his private aircraft before secretly parachuting out and letting his plane crash in the Florida panhandle, authorities said Monday.