The Miracle of Flight 1549 started with a trembling bang and blue flames shooting from the engine. With both engines out, a calm pilot maneuvered his crowded jetliner over New York City and landed it in the freezing Hudson River on Thursday, and all 155 passengers and crews on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank.
“Brace for impact.”
Jeff Kolodjay, 31, was on the plane with five golf buddies, headed to Myrtle Beach, S.C., for an annual tournament.
They had booked on Spirit Air, but that flight was canceled and they wound up on a US Airways jet out of LaGuardia Airport.
“It was only a couple of minutes after we took off an engine blew,” Kolodjay said outside the NY Waterway ferry terminal on the West Side.
He was in seat 22-A, just over the left engine. He looked out the window, saw flames and smelled gasoline.
“Fire just started blowing out the left engine pretty hard,” he said.
The plane was losing altitude, but it seemed like the pilot still had control. Then a flight attendant dashed down the aisle in search of a fire extinguisher and panic spread.
“Within a minute, everyone knew what was happening. It became real,” said Bill Zuhowski, 23, a Long Islander sitting directly behind Kolodjay.
Any thought that the plane might return to LaGuardia for an emergency landing vanished with the voice of pilot Chesley Sullenberger over the public address system.
“The captain just said, ‘Brace for impact,’” Kolodjay said. “And that’s what we all did. We put our heads down. We got ready.”
Some people locked arms. Others prayed.
“I thought we were going to die. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I never got to tell my family I love them every day,’” said grandmother Elizabeth McHugh, 64, of Charlotte, N.C.
An eerie silence fell over the cabin as the blue-and-gray jet plunged a final 100 feet.
“I noticed the New York skyline getting closer and closer,” said Dave Sanderson, 47, a married father of four who works for Oracle in Charlotte and was here on business.
The plane hit the water and Sanderson, sitting in 15-A, smacked his head on the seat in front of him. He lifted it to see “controlled chaos” unfolding around him.
“People started running up and down aisles. People were yelling and pushing,” Sanderson said.
A crowd surged to the back of the plane, where the emergency exits were located. The rush caused the rear of the plane to start sinking, and water poured into it.
“The water was up to my neck. I thought I was going to drown right there because I couldn’t move,” said Zuhowski, who stripped down to his underwear so his wet clothes wouldn’t weigh him down.
As the 40-degree river water sloshed through the fuselage, some passengers clambered over seats - ignoring calls to “Calm down!”
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