Stephen Mallon is an industrial photographer who was on site to photograph the salvage of ditched US Airways flight 1549 which landed in the Hudson earlier last month. He is so far the only photographer that I know of that has had access to the inside of the plane. I always hear about the seat cushions being used as flotation devices, but I never really knew how they were fastened on. It looks like it’s just a lot of Velcro holding the seat cushion in place.
I’ve posted some images below, but you should really check out his entire gallery of the salvage of flight 1549.
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 which crashed into the Hudson River on January 15, speaks for the first time on national television about that day. In his interview with Katie Couric, Sullenberger revealed that he knew exactly what to do after he realized that his plane was literally gliding toward the earth. Even when he had zero engine thrust, Sullenberger remained professional and calm, knowing precisely what the protocol was to take control of the plane and land it in water.
The AP has released this raw surveillance video of the US Airways crash into the Hudson River on Thursday. The video shows how quickly people were on top of the wing of the ditched plane. Impressive!
The Smoking Gun has done some excellent investigative work and dug up a photo of Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III, the pilot responsible for safely landing the US Airways AIrbus 320 into the Hudson River this afternoon.
In short, he’s a veteran of the US Air Force and has worked with US Airways since 1980, so inexperienced he is not. Hats off to this amazing man and his great efforts today in making sure everybody got out of there alive!
