Re-Animation of Flight 1549

[Richard McDonald Woods]

A great re-animation of US Airways 1549 into the Hudson River is at http://flightaware.com/squawks/link/1/7_days/popular_new/3157/Re_Animation_of_Flight_1549

Cheers, Richard

[Will]

That's a great animation.  It's really instructive.  I'd heard the ATC tapes, but with the speech boxes for the cockpit crew, you get a real sense for how busy they were.  It was not a simple "turn and land" affair, but a complex, ongoing reassessment of a rapidly changing situation, addressed with a combination of creativity and well-trained checklist use.  My opinion: they did a great job and deserve credit, but there's also lots of credit that goes to the system itself... their airline's training philosophy; the industry's ideas of standardized procedures, CRM, and smooth coordination with ATC; and so on.  It's a great to see all parts of this complex system work so well in a crisis.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

An incredible heap of professional animations can be found at the Exosphere 3D web site: http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/project_gallery/cactus_1549_hudson_river.html

It is impressive to see how much background communication takes place between the various air traffic controllers. They knew exactly what was going on while it happened, which was not apparent from the initial reports.