There is no organization that knows more about the bird-destroying, glider-flying, water-crashing miracle in the Hudson River than Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford.
Those engineers at Pratt have been studying birds and airplane engines so long that they actually remember the first day that a goose got off a plane, picked up a golf club, waddled out to a golf course, hit a 230-yard drive — and then pooped all over everything. The rest is history.
Pratt has been throwing dead birds into airplane engines for decades, to simulate exactly what sort of happened to that U.S. Airways plane. In fact, you can’t get much better chicken salad than what the Pratt cafeteria serves on “Bird-Testing Thursday.”
Less well known are the secret recorders that the Pratt engineers implant in the chests of commercial pilots, to monitor reactions to feathered, flying debris and the aftermath. This recorder is not removed until the pilot retires, so that Pratt sociologists can gauge the impact of the bird collision not only at the time of sucking them in, but forever.
Sources with a mediocre record of accuracy have given me access to Pratt’s transcript of pilot Chesley B. ‘Sully” Sullenberger’s return home on the day of the water landing. It went something like this.
Sully: Hello, dear, I’m home.
Wife: How was your day at the office, honey?
Sully: The boss was very pleased with my performance; I think I got a feather in my cap.
Wife: Really?
Sully: And feathers in my teeth and in the cockpit and in the airfoil and all over the Hudson River.
Wife: That’s nice, honey. Would you please put away the dishes in the sink?
Frigid Waters
Sully: The dishes might still be wet, which is sort of what I am, after flailing around in the frigid waters of the Hudson.
Wife: Well, be careful, you don’t want to leave spots on the glasses.
Sully: Honey, I might be getting a lot of phone calls tonight. I’d appreciate it if you would answer and tell them I’ m not available.
Wife: Sully, I know you and your sister had that little fight about whether to put mom in the nursing home, but I don’t think you should avoid talking to her.
Sully: No, no, the calls will be from journalists who want to ask me questions about the birds.
Wife: Well, nobody barbeques a better chicken than you do, but I didn’t know the newspapers interviewed amateurs about things like that.
Sully: The smell of the burning birds was really scary; I knew right away that we were in trouble.
Wife: You really have to tell the flight attendants to be more careful with the microwave.
Boats To The Rescue
Sully: We were really lucky there were so many boats on the river. I think we would have had a real disaster if there had been a delay in picking up the passengers.
Wife: I didn’t know they were using boats to pick up the passengers. What happened to the taxis and limos?
Sully: Honey, have you been unusually busy and distracted today, to the point where you, like, you know, didn’t listen to the radio or watch television or anything?
Wife: No busier than usual. Why do you ask?
Sully: Because my plane was attacked by terrorist geese and both the engines failed and I glided to a spectacular landing in the Hudson River and I stayed on board until every last passenger escaped, including the unimportant ones in economy class, and then I emerged, to the applause and awe of a grateful nation.
Wife: Oh, you are such a tease.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
