The aircraft is being moved to Harrison for inspection after its recovery from the Hudson River. This is a photograph of the recovery process, rather than the ditching or passenger evacuation.
Resized and JPEG recompressed; no content changes.
Geographic context
New York LaGuardia
Hudson near Weehawken
Charlotte Douglas, intended
Schematic geography only. Airport and location markers are approximate; markers do not show a recorded flight track. Basemap: Natural Earth, public domain.Read supporting evidence
Shortly after departure from LaGuardia, Flight 1549 encountered a flock of birds. Ingestion into both engines caused an almost total loss of thrust. The captain took control while the first officer worked through the dual-engine-failure checklist. With little altitude and no successful restart, the crew concluded that a runway could not be reached and ditched on the Hudson River. All 155 occupants escaped and were rescued.
Read the full incident Follow what happened, from the flight to the investigation findings.
What investigators concluded
The NTSB identified large-bird ingestion into both engines as the probable cause. It separately identified factors contributing to fuselage damage and the loss of the aft slide/rafts: certification assumptions, limited ditching training and guidance, and difficulty maintaining intended airspeed under heavy workload. Crew decision-making, cabin evacuation, overwater equipment and the nearby responders contributed to survival.
1,769 words / about 9 minutes to read. Based on the investigation records cited below.
A routine climb out of New York
US Airways flight 1549 left LaGuardia for Charlotte on January 15, 2009, carrying 150 passengers and five crewmembers. One passenger was a lap-held child. The Airbus A320, registered N106US, had already flown from Charlotte to New York with the same crew without incident. This was their second flight in that aircraft that day and the last flight of a four-day trip. Nothing in the takeoff or initial climb suggested the emergency that would follow.
The first officer was flying and the captain was monitoring the flight and handling radio communications. At 15:24:54 Eastern Standard Time, the tower cleared them to take off from runway 4. After departure, the captain reported that they were climbing through 700 feet toward their initial cleared altitude of 5,000 feet. The departure controller then cleared them to 15,000 feet. The weather allowed the pilots to see outside the aircraft, although the flight itself was operating under an instrument flight plan.
These details establish how little height the aircraft had accumulated when the emergency began. The crew had not reached cruise, and there would be no long descent in which to diagnose a problem, run several checklists and plan a landing. The usable time would be measured in minutes. The report's account follows the voice recorder, flight data recorder, air traffic recordings and the crew's later interviews, rather than relying on a reconstruction of what anyone might have been thinking.
At about 15:27:11, the aircraft encountered a flock of birds at 2,818 feet above ground level. It was about 4.5 miles north-northwest of the approach end of LaGuardia runway 22. The cockpit recorder captured impact sounds and a shuddering noise. The flight recorder showed both engines' fan and core speeds beginning to fall immediately afterward. This was a failure affecting both sources of thrust during the same brief encounter, rather than one engine failing and another subsequently developing an unrelated problem.
The captain recognized that both engines were losing power, started the auxiliary power unit and took control of the aircraft. The auxiliary power unit is a separate source of electrical power. Starting it did not restore engine thrust, but it supplied power while the crew dealt with the emergency. The captain assigned the first officer to retrieve the quick reference handbook procedure for loss of thrust on both engines, then reported the situation to the departure controller and began turning back toward LaGuardia.
The engines still showed some activity, but neither could provide enough thrust to sustain flight. Investigators later identified Canada goose material in both engines. Their analysis of the remains and mechanical damage concluded that each engine had ingested at least two large geese. That conclusion did not depend on finding individually identifiable remains from every bird: damage patterns supplemented the biological evidence. The report describes an almost total loss of thrust, a more precise description than saying that every rotating part in both engines instantly stopped.
Choosing a landing place while attempting a restart
The first officer began the dual-engine failure checklist while the captain flew and spoke to air traffic control. The procedure included an optimum engine restart airspeed of 300 knots. The aircraft did not have that speed available: the maximum recorded speed after the bird encounter was 214 knots. The checklist was therefore being used in a situation with much less height and energy than some of its steps assumed. There was no successful restart as the aircraft continued descending.
The controller offered LaGuardia runways, but the captain judged that he could not reach them. He then asked about an airport in New Jersey and considered Teterboro. The controller coordinated a landing there and offered runway 1. The captain again concluded that it was beyond reach and committed to the Hudson River. The successive radio exchanges show options being examined as the aircraft's position and height changed. They do not establish that a runway remained safely available after the decision to use the river.
The NTSB later tested airport returns in a simulator. Some attempts succeeded when the simulated pilot began turning immediately after the bird strike. Those attempts omitted the time a real crew needed to recognize the failure and decide what to do. A return to LaGuardia runway 13 with a 35-second delay did not succeed. On that evidence, the board concluded that using the Hudson offered the highest probability of a survivable outcome. The practical question was where this damaged aircraft could go after recognition and decision time, rather than where a prepared simulator pilot could send it at the instant of impact.
At 15:29:11, the captain instructed the passengers to brace. The first officer continued attempting to restart an engine while monitoring the descent. The controller still supplied possible airport options, but the aircraft was already approaching the river. The crew selected the flaps to position 2, leaving the landing gear retracted. The first officer reported the flap setting and asked whether the captain wanted more extension; the captain kept the selected setting. The recorder captured repeated terrain warnings as the aircraft descended toward the water.
The short time available prevented completion of the dual-engine failure checklist. The crew never reached its later guidance for a landing on water and did not start the separate ditching checklist. Their work continued until the last seconds, including engine restart attempts and a signal to the cabin crew. The aircraft struck the Hudson at about 15:30:43, roughly three and a half minutes after the bird encounter. A flight that had begun with an ordinary airport departure was now a water evacuation beside Weehawken, New Jersey.
The landing was survivable, but it was not free of structural damage. In its analysis, the NTSB found that the aircraft was slower than the captain intended during much of the descent and below the lowest selectable speed near the water. The resulting high angle of attack made the final flare more difficult and contributed to a high descent rate and fuselage damage. The board examined this within the workload and time pressure of the emergency. Successful survival did not lead investigators to treat every aspect of the approach as an ideal ditching profile.
Passengers and crewmembers began evacuating within seconds. The usable routes were the forward doors and the overwing exits. The forward slide/rafts provided floating spaces, while people who used the overwing exits gathered on the wings. Water entering the rear of the cabin made movement toward the front particularly urgent. The cabin crew redirected passengers away from the rear and drew some people forward when queues developed at the overwing exits.
The equipment needed active handling. At the right forward door, the slide/raft inflated automatically, but the door began moving back into the opening. A flight attendant assigned a passenger to hold it clear while others passed underneath his arm. At the left forward door, the slide/raft did not inflate automatically; the flight attendant used its manual inflation handle. The rear slide/rafts were unavailable. These were practical evacuation problems taking place after the flight crew had already achieved the water landing.
The captain and first officer assisted the cabin crew. They noticed that some passengers had left without life vests, collected vests from beneath cabin seats and passed them to people outside. They then checked the cabin for anyone still aboard before leaving onto a forward slide/raft. The report records both the speed of the evacuation and its limitations. Only two passengers retrieved and put on life vests before impact. The familiar photographs of people standing on the wings show a stage of the rescue, rather than proof that everyone had flotation equipment or had escaped the cold without risk.
The aircraft came down near the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal, in a waterway where ferries were already operating. Captains either witnessed the landing or received notice from ferry operations. Seven New York Waterway vessels responded and recovered occupants. The first vessel reached the aircraft at about 15:34, and the other six ferries were present by about 15:40. Fire department and Coast Guard boats joined the response. Their proximity reduced the time that people had to remain exposed on wings, slides or in the water.
The airport tower had activated its emergency alert system before the landing. That notification brought in airport, police, fire, medical and water rescue organizations. The response therefore combined boats already close enough to act with a wider coordinated emergency operation. Video analysis placed the first vessel alongside just under four minutes after impact and the departure of the final vessel carrying rescued passengers at about 15:54:43. The timing is an estimate aligned across recordings, rather than an assumption that every camera clock was exact.
All 155 occupants survived. The injury table records five serious injuries: four passengers and one flight attendant. It also records 95 passengers with minor injuries and 55 occupants without injury. The aircraft was substantially damaged. Describing the outcome only as everyone surviving would leave out those injuries and the vulnerability of the evacuation. The NTSB credited the nearby responders and their immediate action as factors in survival, alongside the crews and the availability of forward slide/rafts on an aircraft equipped for extended overwater operations.
The NTSB attributed the accident to large birds entering both engines and causing an almost complete loss of thrust. The birds exceeded the ingestion conditions covered by the engine certification standards. Investigators examined how material entering the engine cores prevented useful thrust, rather than treating the event as damage limited to the visible fan blades. The aircraft's recent engine maintenance history did not displace the recorded sequence linking the power loss to the bird encounter.
The board separately identified factors that contributed to the fuselage damage and the loss of the rear slide/rafts. These included approval of ditching certification without establishing that pilots could achieve the specified profile without engine thrust, insufficient training and guidance, and the captain's difficulty maintaining the intended approach speed under task saturation. It also credited the crew's decisions and coordination, the cabin crew's evacuation work, the aircraft's overwater equipment and the nearby rescuers. Cause, damage and survival were therefore assessed as different questions within the same event.
A concurring board member preferred the term forced landing on water to ditching because the crew had so little preparation time. He nevertheless supported the report's findings and recommendations. That terminology disagreement does not alter the central sequence: a low-altitude bird encounter removed usable thrust from both engines, the crew brought the aircraft to the river, and evacuation and rescue prevented deaths. The final report also produced recommendations on bird hazards, checklists, training and survival equipment. Those recommendations record the investigation's proposed improvements; they are not, by themselves, evidence of every later implementation.
The captain identified birds. Recorded impact sounds followed, and both engines began to decelerate. The aircraft was about 2,818 feet above ground level.
The voice recording ended at 15:30:43.7. Within seconds of ditching, evacuation began through forward and overwing exits. All occupants were subsequently rescued.
Impact damage and water entry made the aft slide/rafts unavailable. The NTSB linked that outcome to certification assumptions, limited ditching guidance and difficulty maintaining intended airspeed under heavy workload.
The adopted report uses ditching. A concurring Board member argued that forced landing on water better described the limited preparation time, while supporting the findings and recommendations.
Impact factors are separate from the initiating cause
Bird ingestion caused thrust loss. The report separately discusses factors affecting impact damage and survival; those should not be substituted for the initiating cause.
Actions and recommendations are described at the dates of the cited records. A recommendation is not proof of implementation.
Low-altitude dual-engine failure: recommended
The NTSB recommended a dedicated checklist and procedure for dual-engine failure at low altitude and training for workload management in that scenario. These are report-era recommendations, not verified current implementation.
The NTSB recommended demonstrating that ditching parameters could be attained without engine power, improving safety-equipment accessibility and improving life-vest retrieval. Later compliance is not established here.
These comparisons connect specific research topics. Shared circumstances do not establish identical causes. Evidence from both investigations is provided below.
Both crews faced a loss of thrust at low altitude, but the initiating mechanisms differ: bird ingestion here and restricted fuel flow in the British Airways investigation.
Explore the records below for additional context. They open on the publisher's site and are not all included in our report search. Source reuse terms apply.
Official search guidance for finding investigation records and recommendation responses. Use US Airways 1549 and the A-10 recommendation identifiers listed above.
Sources and transparency
Checked against the NTSB final report through source and page comparison. No independent expert review.
Source limitations
This dossier distinguishes the initiating bird ingestion from factors affecting impact damage and survival. Approximate ditching time is rounded from the end of the recorder sequence. Report photographs, diagrams and the full cockpit transcript are not reproduced.
Loss of Thrust in Both Engines After Encountering a Flock of Birds and Subsequent Ditching on the Hudson River, US Airways Flight 1549, Airbus A320-214, N106US, January 15, 2009
National Transportation Safety Board NTSB/AAR-10/03, adopted 4 May 2010
Brief attributed excerpts for source-based commentary. Full report, photographs and third-party material are not republished. Source terms / provenance.
Kevin Murphy writes the incident accounts on AirlineIncidents.com, out of a long interest in aviation safety and the lessons each investigation leaves behind.
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Revision history
: Checked report citations and source hashes. Added credited photographs, geographic context, sequence diagrams, reader answers, evidence limits, report-era safety follow-up, further records, sourced incident comparisons and this editorial record.
: Added a full chronological account with section-level report references and links from the short summary.
