Emergency response units search the crash site of the American Airlines plane on the Potomac River. Photo / Getty Images
Emergency response units search the crash site of the American Airlines plane on the Potomac River. Photo / Getty Images
Chesley B. Sullenberger III said though flying was safer than ever, the Potomac River crash showed the need for constant vigilance and learning from past errors.
Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who safely landed a passenger plane in the Hudson River in 2009, said the crashin the Potomac River on Wednesday night (Thursday NZ time) came at an “exceptionally safe” moment in aviation history but showed “how vigilant we have to be”.
“We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accidents,” Sullenberger said in an interview Wednesday night.
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is known for his successful landing of a US Airways plane on the Hudson River in 2009. Photo / Jim Wilson, The New York Times
Before Wednesday, there had not been a fatal commercial plane crash in the United States in almost 16 years.
But the US airline industry may again be forced to learn from tragedy, after a commercial airliner carrying 64 people collided in mid-air with an Army Black Hawk helicopter and then plunged into the dark, frigid waters of the Potomac River.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700, collided with the chopper on descent into Reagan National Airport, which is just a few miles from downtown Washington and is considered one of the country’s most challenging airports to navigate.
Reagan Airport requires additional training for pilots who operate from it, Sullenberger said. It fields heavy traffic and has short runways. It was built in the late 1930s.
“It hasn’t changed much since then,” he said. “Of course, we’ve added technology to it. But a lot of the technology is old.”
The airport may not have been the only challenge for the American Eagle Flight 5342 as it approached Washington on a flight that originated in Wichita, Kansas.
The descent was also at night and over water, two factors that could have made avoiding the helicopter harder, Sullenberger said.
“Night-time always makes things different about seeing other aircraft – basically all you can do is see the lights on them,” said Sullenberger, 74. “You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed?
“Everything is harder at night,” he said.
Emergency response units assess helicopter wreckage in the Potomac River. Photo / Getty Images
It was a sunny January afternoon in 2009 when Sullenberger landed an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River. That plane went down after a large flock of Canada geese knocked out both of its engines shortly after take-off. All 150 passengers and five crew members were safely rescued from the icy waters, as emergency crews and ordinary boats that happened to be nearby hurried to the scene.
On Wednesday night, the waters of the Potomac River might have hurt visibility, Sullenberger said.
“There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night,” he said.
“It might have made it a little bit harder to see,” he added. “But that’s supposition. We don’t know.”
