Plane hoisted from Hudson

NEW YORK – Two black boxes were being taken to Washington yesterday to be analysed for clues on why their airplane’s engines cut out, leading the pilot to glide the US Airways jetliner into New York’s Hudson River.

The aircraft was slowly hoisted from the frigid waters late Saturday, exposing a torn and shredded underbelly that dropped pieces of metal as it was manoeuvred in the darkness onto a waiting barge. It wasn’t immediately clear where the barge would be taken. Divers still have to recover the sunken left engine of the plane, but now have an idea where to look. A sonar team has identified an object directly below the crash site, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB. Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, speaking to NTSB investigators for the first time on Saturday, said he made a split-second decision to put down in the river rather than risk a ‘catastrophic’ crash in a populated neighbourhood after birds knocked out both engines. The NTSB said radar data confirmed that the aircraft intersected a group of ‘primary targets’, almost certainly birds, as the jet climbed over the Bronx. Those targets had not been on the radar screen of the air traffic controller who approved the departure, NTSB board member Kitty Higgins said. Sullenberger recounted seeing his windshield filled with big, dark-brown birds. Sullenberger told investigators he immediately took over flying from his co-pilot and decided it would be too dangerous to attempt a landing at nearby Teterboro Airport. ‘We can’t do it,’ he told air traffic controllers. ‘We’re gonna be in the Hudson.’ Two flight attendants likened it to a hard landing – nothing more. There was one impact, no bounce, then a gradual deceleration. It all happened so fast, the crew never threw the aircraft’s ‘ditch switch’, which seals off vents and holes in the fuselage to make it more seaworthy. Hoisting the waterlogged craft, estimated to weigh nearly a half-million kilograms, took a few hours on Saturday but was preceded by hours of waiting. Crews dove underwater to thread five large slings around the plane and through holes they drilled in the wings. – Nampa-AP