On Jan 16, 3:13*pm, "JohnR66" wrote:
"dpb" wrote in message

...
On Jan 16, 8:21 am, Smitty Two wrote:
... As far as the pilot being a hero, sure, he did a nice job. Any pilot
could have easily done the same thing. Planes fly perfectly well without
engine power. Only caveat is, they fly a descending course.

...

That's utter BS about "any pilot" and "easily". *The descending course
from perhaps 8000-ft over the city that Airbus was "flying perfectly
well" w/o power is mostly flying just a little better than a rock--
they're not gliders.

No they're not gliders, but if your descending without power, the plane is
losing potential energy so it can, in some cases, fly faster and retain
maneuverability.
You just better have some space to land cause there is no second chance.

That one would hope that any commercial pilot would be capable of the
feat is comforting thought if one flies; reality is far different.
Even whether this guy could duplicate the result is probably 50:50 at
best; undoubtedly his chances of getting it to the ditching spot would
be pretty good but the ditching itself would be a crapshoot to come
off that well.

The guy was outstanding (and I suspect, if asked, would say had some
luck on his side to boot)...

--

The maximum altitude reached was reported as 3500 ft and the total
time from the point of impact by the birds to touchdown on the river
was 3 1/2 minutes. During that time, the pilot had to assess the
situation, determine a landing position, handle the radio and flying
functions while the co-pilot followed the engine restart checklist and
attempted an engine restart.