Thick mud, menacing currents and bone-chilling temperatures stymied investigators Friday as they scoured the Hudson River for the two missing engines from a US Airways jetliner that crash-landed in the water after colliding with birds. The investigation ran into a series of obstacles one day after the pilot ditched the plane carrying 155 people. The collision apparently caused both of the engines to fail, forcing the aircraft to go down just a few hundred yards from the Manhattan skyline. All aboard survived.
Sometime after the plane hit the water, the engines broke off and sank to the bottom, forcing investigators to use sonar to search for them.
Experts said the wreckage could be nearly impossible to find because it is probably 30 to 50 feet down, stuck in mud and obscured by thick sediment. Conditions are so murky that police and fire department divers will have to feel about by hand.The current was especially swift Friday, making it impossible for crews to hoist the aircraft out of the water and remove its flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
The pilot's status as a national hero rose by the hour as he took congratulatory calls from the president and president-elect, earned effusive praise from passengers on the plane and become the subject of a growing global fan club. The pilot was in good spirits and showing no outward signs of stress from the ordeal, a pilots union official said.Investigators want to closely inspect the engines to figure out how exactly the birds caused the plane to fail so badly and so fast. They may also examine any feathers remaining in the engine to determine the type of bird species, helping prevent future mishaps.
The type of engine on the Airbus 320 is designed to withstand a 4-pound bird strike, said Jamie Jewell, a spokeswoman for CFM International of Cincinnati, which manufactures the engines. That's fairly typical for commercial airliners and their engines, although larger Canada geese can exceed 12 pounds.
"A lot of things went right yesterday, including the way that not only the crew functioned, but the way the plane functioned." This plane crash hudson investigation going on.
The investigation began as new details emerged about why the pilot chose to land the plane in the river — and not at two nearby airports. The pilot twice told air controllers that he was unable to make the proper turn after reporting a "double bird strike."The accident also raised questions about whether airports around the country are doing enough to deal with bird flocks.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it kills thousands of birds every year in the marshy waterways and tidal flats that surround its two major airports in Queens, and uses guns, pyrotechnics and hawks to drive away birds.One Boeing 737 pilot writing about a strike in a safety report described the smell of burnt feathers and seabird after a gull was sucked into his rear engine during a landing at LaGuardia in 2004.
If the accident was hard to imagine, so was the result: Besides one victim with two broken legs, there were no other reports of serious injuries.
If an engine takes in a large bird — or several birds at once — fan blades may break, causing an imbalance in the engine's rotation and severe vibrations, said Kevin Poormon, who tests the ability of aircraft engines to withstand bird strikes. Those vibrations conceivably could be strong enough to cause the engine to come loose from its mounting, Poormon said.
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