Close enough where it counts.

That was my thought. At 200 + mph, seems like it would have to be a seriously armored cage to stop portions of the bird from getting through.

I heard a piece on NPR about staff at the Sacramento airport hunting birds to minimize numbers. That's if monster fire-cracker noise doesn't ward them off first. The bird hunting tactic is in some sort of litigation now.

Can't tell you. I'm guessing two round trips. Wouldn't want to spoil such a good outcome by missing someone lying on the floor.

I read in the newspaper that the engines are at the bottom of the river.

Citizen and Police rescue time
 

Note the response time of the Ferry boat Captains and the Police Harbor team and the total cooperation of the passengers and an A1 top notch US Air crew.
1) the Pilot and Co pilot had 35,000 flicght hours between them, co pilot was a former Command pilot who downgraded when US Air cut back and took the right seat job to keep his pension. Pilot was the best you could want in the situation, 6 year USAF, 19 year US Air, 40 year Glider pilot and from what I have heard a stellar individual all around.
2)Cabin crew were all Senior Attendants (50+) and the first passengers steppped onto the wing 27 seconds after the plane stopped moving!
3)NYC Harbor folks are the best. The NY Waterways crews have saved several folks from drowning and aided the cops numerous times. Helicopter went in the East River 3 years ago and ferryboat crew and bystanders saved everyone before the cops got there.
4)NYPD Harbor Patrol on site in 6 minutes. Divers in the water in 8 minutes dropped from a chopper (no tanks just a snorkle and fins).

We here in NYC may be looked at as being rough, crude and unyielding but we do have the BEST folks when it comes to First Responders!

If you are going to have something like this happen, NYC is the place and our folks are the best out there!

I've been trying to do my part, but they have not been cooperating.

Imagine trying to retrieve those engines.

That river has been navigated by European vessels since the ... what, 1600's?

400 years of crap deing dumped overboard. Tackles, wire rope, cargo. Gawd knows what. Even sunken vessels. Not to mention debris from the city. I'll bet the river is 40 ft deep in the channel (guessing).

It's murky, deep, cold, full of debris and has a current. Raise your hand if you'd like to be a diver on that crew. I mean aside from our spelling champ.

The current is brisk from the videos I have seen. I too am amazed that the plane held together. I read this afternoon that one engine is still attached.

You're about right when it comes to the depth. The paper said 30-50 ft deep. The water's so murky that the divers will likely have to feel by hand for the engine. I say engine because they just discovered that one of the engines is still on the plane, the water was just so murky that they couldn't tell until they hoisted the plane onto a barge.

US Airways Jet Lifted From Hudson
Intensity of Multiple Bird Strikes Isn't Covered By FAA Safety RegulationsArticle
By ANDY PASZTOR

Getty Images
A crane lifts US Airways flight 1549 from the Hudson River late Saturday.

The US Airways plane that ditched minutes after taking off from New York last week is believed to have encountered an intense barrage of bird strikes exceeding any such events covered by federal standards for engine durability, according to aviation safety experts.

Salvage crews hoisted the jetliner from the Hudson River and onto a barge late Saturday as federal crash investigators worked to confirm whether it suffered bird strikes in both of its engines, as preliminary reports have indicated. Crews later retrieved the plane's black boxes, which were filled with fresh water, packed into blue coolers and were to be sped immediately to Washington.

Investigators disclosed earlier Saturday that the pilots of US Airways Flight 1549 recounted smashing into a flock of large brown birds, which momentarily covered much of their windshield and was quickly followed by the smell of burning carcasses from the jet's damaged engines. The pilots of the Airbus A320 told investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board that roughly a minute after lifting off from LaGuardia Airport with 155 people aboard, they ran into a flock of birds flying in formation and lost power from both engines. The crew managed to glide the aircraft to a spectacular safe landing on the Hudson River, and everyone survived.

But as details emerge about how quickly the birds crippled the jet as it was climbing through about 3,000 feet, it seems the size and the number of birds involved wasn't contemplated by existing Federal Aviation Administration safety standards. While some outside safety experts already are calling for a reassessment to determine if those standards should be tightened, airline industry officials and engine makers counter that technology doesn't exist to improve the fuel efficiency of newly-designed engines while also making them substantially more resistant to such intense stresses from sucking birds into their fast-moving turbine blades.

Coast Guard footage shows the last minutes of the US Airways jet that crashed in the Hudson. Video courtesy Fox News.

According to material posted on the FAA's Web site, the type of engines on the US Airways jet were certified to be able to keep operating for five minutes at 75% of normal takeoff power after ingesting a total of five birds, each weighing 1.5 pounds. If a single bird weighing four pounds gets sucked into an engine, FAA standards require it to be able to shut down safely, without a fire or internal disintegration. Aviation experts have said that some Canada geese can weigh as much as 12 or 13 pounds apiece, and the population of such birds has been growing steadily. Investigators haven't yet identified the specific kind of birds involved in the latest accident.

According to interviews of the pilots by investigators, the A320 encountered a virtual wall of birds that somehow veered into its path, Kitty Higgins, a safety board member, told reporters earlier Saturday. The FAA rules also never envisioned a scenario in which relatively low-altitude collisions with birds could result in both engines of such an airliner catastrophically losing power. Over the years, however, the FAA has imposed tougher engine-performance requirements, tried to make engine-certification tests more realistic and supported research to reduce the dangers.


hen it comes to the CFM-56 engine family, a workhorse of airlines around the world that fly Airbus narrow-body aircraft, the FAA's rules focus on dual-engine failures occurring at high altitudes, where pilots have much more time to react. The FAA's site says that in cases of dual-engine failures on the A320 family of jets, safety procedures "assume crew has time to attempt a restart" of the engines, and there are "step-by-step actions to perform at specific altitudes.":rolleyes:
Industry officials have said that General Electric has no record of dual-engine failures on Airbus A320s family going back at least the past two decades.

The engines are made by CFM International SA, a joint venture between General Electric Co.'s engine unit and Snecma, part of France's Safran Groupe SA.

Barely a minute after the bird strikes, the captain of the Flight 1549 began talking to controllers about probably having to ditch in the river, according to a timeline released by investigators. The copilot kept trying unsuccessfully to restart the engines, while simultaneously running through an emergency-landing checklist, according to an Associated Press report. But because the plane had just taken off, and had only reached an altitude of around 3,000 feet, it had little time to go through the checklist. The plane splashed into the frigid water about three minutes after hitting the birds.

Associated Press contributed to this article.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

Video of first moments
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123225944977193793.html#video%3D2E64F205-4E3D-41B0-94E4-EAA90DE44DBD%26articleTabs%3Dvideo

Last night my little brother told me that they had a huge banner/picture of Capt. Sullenberger at the costco in Danville, CA.

The technology can never exist. Either you go for the maximum fuel efficiency or you put a guard on the front of the engine to prevent any bird ingestion.

You'll never have both.

It has to be retractible.

The problem is at takeoff power. That's when the engine needs all available air. Retracting it for cruise doesn't solve the takeoff issue. You'd need a larger engine operating at less efficiency if you want to induce a vacuum in front of it.

It seems like a tradeoff that will have to be made.

I picture slender fingers going out to a point in the shape of a football so that the surface area can be minimized and it will deflect the birds.

What is the alternative? Make the engine into a goose disposal?

I read somewhere the present standard calls for an engine to be able to digest without burping a 1.5 pound bird. A canadian goose can weigh 12 pounds. In this case it sounds as if they had more than one goose in each engine. You will have to make a hellofa grinder to do all that meat without burbing!

Taking nothing away from the pilot its simply a miracle that they were close enough to hit the river and not the city. Granted a moment of indecision on his part would have met with disaster.

And if the incident had occurred a few minutes later they probably could not have reached the sanctuary of the river.