Plane in the Water: How Flight 1549 Averted Tragedy

On one of the coldest days of the year, a passenger jet carrying more than 150 people was forced to make a water landing in the frigid Hudson River. US Airways flight 1549, with 150 passengers and five crew members, crashed into waters just west of Manhattan after taking off from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C. “I was driving down 72nd Street [on the west side of Manhattan], and I saw the plane falling, falling,” one eyewitness, Spiro Ketahs, told TIME. When it hit the Hudson, he said, the water gushed like a volcano. Said Adam Weiner, an employee at MTV who saw the accident from his midtown Manhattan office building: “I was sitting in a conference room on the 39th floor, facing the window. All of a sudden I see a plane gliding into a river. At first I didn’t realize what I was seeing. Then spray went up, and you could tell it was a jetliner. Then a couple seconds after, the door blew off and you could see the raft blow up.” (See Photos of the Hudson River Plane Crash)By...