Chesley Sullenberger - Pilot of US Airways AWE1549

US Airways Flight 1549 was a scheduled commercial passenger flight from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina, that, on January 15, 2009, was successfully ditched in the Hudson River adjacent to Manhattan six minutes after departing from LaGuardia Airport.

While on its initial climb out, the Airbus A320 struck a flock of Canada Geese which resulted in an immediate and nearly complete loss of thrust from both engines. When the aircrew determined that the aircraft would be unable to safely reach any airfield from its location just northeast of the George Washington Bridge, they turned it southbound and glided over the river into which they ditched the airliner near the USS Intrepid Museum in midtown Manhattan about three minutes later. All 155 occupants safely evacuated the airliner, which was still virtually intact though partially submerged and slowly sinking. The occupants were quickly rescued by nearby watercraft.

The entire crew of Flight 1549 was later awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. The award citation read, "This emergency ditching and evacuation, with the loss of no lives, is a heroic and unique aviation achievement."

Category: File - :USAirwaysHQTempe.jpg|thumb|US Airways headquarters in Tempe

US Airways, Inc., an operating unit of US Airways Group, is the fifth largest airline in the United States.

A member of the Star Alliance, the airline has a fleet of 353 mainline jet aircraft and 319 regional jet and turbo-prop aircraft connecting 200 destinations in North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Europe and the Middle East.

As of December 2008, US Airways, headquartered in Tempe, Arizona,"US AIRWAYS ISSUES RESPONSE REGARDING DELTA'S CREDITORS' COMMITTEE STATEMENT." US Airways. December 20, 2006. Retrieved on May 18, 2009. employs 33,765 people worldwide and operates 3,130 daily flights (1,312 US Airways Mainline, 1,818 US Airways Express as of December 2008).

The airline was acquired by America West Airlines and its partners in 2005, with the new airline retaining the US Airways name. January 2008 Passenger Airline Employment Up 3.4 Percent from January 2007, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, March 16, 2008Lean Production in the Air: Low-cost Competition Taking Off in the Global Airline Industry and Implications for Employment Relations, Nancy Johnson, Labor and Employment Relations Association Series, Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting'

US Airways operates hubs in Charlotte, Philadelphia and Phoenix. US Airways also maintains focus city operations at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas (ending February 10).http://www2.usairways.com/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_651367906662491A73B42DD429A7392E26830000/filename/factsheet.pdf

The airline operates the US Airways Shuttle, a US Airways brand which provides hourly service between Boston, New York, and Washington, DC. Regional airline service is branded as US Airways Express, operated by contract and subsidiary airline companies.

On November 23, 2009, US Airways announced the deferment of 54 Airbus SAS aircraft (A320, A330, A350), allowing them to delay $2.5 billion in capital.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aeQPKzdEOn6M

The Airbus A320 family is a family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jet airliners manufactured by Airbus. The family includes the A318, A319, A320, and A321, as well as the ACJ business jet.

The first member of the A320 family, the A320, was launched in March 1984, first flew on 22 February 1987, and was first delivered in 1988. The family was soon extended to include the A321 (first delivered 1994), the A319 (1996), and the A318 (2003). The A320 family pioneered the use of digital fly-by-wire flight control systems in a commercial aircraft. It was also the first, and currently the only, narrow body aircraft in the Airbus lineup.

With over 4,000 built and an additional 2,400 on order as of November 2009, the Airbus A320 family is Airbus's best-selling aircraft to date. It is also the second best-selling jet airliner family, behind its competitor, the Boeing 737.

An aviation accident is defined in the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, in which a person is fatally or seriously injured, the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure and/or the aircraft is missing or is completely inaccessible.

An aviation incident is also defined there as an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.

An accident in which the damage to the aircraft is such that it must be written off, or in which the plane is destroyed is called a hull loss accident.

A bird strike (sometimes birdstrike, bird hit, or BASH - Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard) is a collision between an airborne animal (usually a bird or bat) and a man-made vehicle, especially aircraft. The term is also used for bird deaths resulting from collisions with man made structures such as power lines, towers and wind turbines.

Bird strikes are a significant threat to flight safety, and have caused a number of accidents with human casualties. Major accidents involving civil aircraft are quite low and it has been estimated that there is only about 1 accident resulting in human death in one billion (109) flying hours. The majority of bird strikes (65%) cause little damage to the aircraft; however, the collision is usually fatal to the bird.

Most accidents occur when the bird hits the windscreen or flies into the engines. These cause annual damages that have been estimated at $400 million within the United States of America alone and up to $1.2 billion to commercial aircraft worldwide.

Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aircraft goes through a transition from moving along the ground (taxiing) to flying in the air, usually starting on a runway. For balloons, helicopters and some specialized fixed-wing aircraft (VTOL aircraft such as the Harrier), no runway is needed. Takeoff is the opposite of landing.

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Category: Image - :Shuttle Enterprise 747 SCA takeoff.ogg|thumb|left|Takeoff of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft carrying the Space Shuttle Enterprise

An emergency landing is an unplanned landing made by an aircraft in response to a crisis which either interferes with the operation of the aircraft or involves sudden medical emergencies necessitating diversion to the nearest airport.

A water landing is, in the broadest sense, any landing on a body of water. All waterfowl, those seabirds capable of flight, and some human-built vehicles are capable of landing in water as a matter of course.

The phrase "water landing" is also used as a euphemism for crash-landing into water in an aircraft not designed for the purpose. The National Transportation Safety Board of the United States government defines "ditching" in its aviation accident coding manual as "a planned event in which a flight crew knowingly makes a controlled emergency landing in water. (Excludes float plane landings in normal water landing areas.)"[http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/codman.htm] Such water landings are extremely rare for commercial passenger airlines.

US Airways Flight 1549 was a scheduled commercial passenger flight from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina, that, on January 15, 2009, was successfully ditched in the Hudson River adjacent to Manhattan six minutes after departing from LaGuardia Airport.

While on its initial climb out, the Airbus A320 struck a flock of Canada Geese which resulted in an immediate and nearly complete loss of thrust from both engines. When the aircrew determined that the aircraft would be unable to safely reach any airfield from its location just northeast of the George Washington Bridge, they turned it southbound and glided over the river into which they ditched the airliner near the USS Intrepid Museum in midtown Manhattan about three minutes later. All 155 occupants safely evacuated the airliner, which was still virtually intact though partially submerged and slowly sinking. The occupants were quickly rescued by nearby watercraft.

The entire crew of Flight 1549 was later awarded the Master's Medal of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. The award citation read, "This emergency ditching and evacuation, with the loss of no lives, is a heroic and unique aviation achievement."

A flight data recorder (FDR) (also ADR, for accident data recorder) is a kind of flight recorder. It is a device used to record specific aircraft performance parameters. Another kind of flight recorder is the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), which records conversation in the cockpit, radio communications between the cockpit crew and others (including conversation with air traffic control personnel), as well as ambient sounds. In some cases, both functions have been combined into a single unit.

Popularly referred to as a "black box," the data recorded by the FDR is used for accident investigation, as well as for analyzing air safety issues, material degradation and engine performance. Due to their importance in investigating accidents, these ICAO-regulated devices are carefully engineered and stoutly constructed to withstand the force of a high speed impact and the heat of an intense fire. Contrary to the "black box" reference, the exterior of the FDR is coated with heat-resistant bright orange paint for high visibility in wreckage, and the unit is usually mounted in the aircraft's empennage (tail section), where it is more likely to survive a severe crash. Following an accident, recovery of the "black boxes" is second in importance only to the rescue of survivors and recovery of human remains.

This is a magnetic tape unit built to an old standard TSO C84 as shown on the nameplate. The text on the side in French "FLIGHT RECORDER DO NOT OPEN"]]

Category: Image - :Flightrecorder.jpg|thumb|Both side views of a cockpit voice recorder

Category: Image - :Grossi-7.png|thumb|right|Cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder

[[Image:GravadoVoz.jpg|thumb|Brazilian investigators found the cockpit voice recorder of PR-GTD, a Gol Transportes Aéreos Boeing 737-8EH SFP, in the Amazon in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The airliner, while on Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907, collided with a business jet, nosedived, broke up in-flight, and crashed.(this isn't the CVR it's the module)

A Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), often referred to as a "black box"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8410375.stm, is a flight recorder used to record the audio environment in the flightdeck of an aircraft for the purpose of investigation of accidents and incidents. This is typically achieved by recording the signals of the microphones and earphones of the pilots headsets and of an area microphone in the roof of the cockpit. The current applicable FAA TSO is C123b titled Cockpit Voice Recorder Equipment.

Where an aircraft is required to carry a CVR and utilises digital communications the CVR is required to record such communications with air traffic control unless this is recorded elsewhere. it is an FAA requirement that the recording duration is a minimum of thirty minutes,Federal Aviation Regulation Sec. 121.359 - Cockpit voice recorders but the NTSB has long recommended that it should be at least two hours."Most Wanted List" NTSB

The term black box is a placeholder name used casually, often by journalists, to refer to a collection of several different recording devices used in transportation: the flight recorders (flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder) in aircraft, the event recorder in railway locomotives, the event data recorder in automobiles and other recording devices in various vehicles.

Black box can also be used in physics and electronics to describe a mechanism in which the input and expected outputs are well understood but whose internal operations are deliberately and completely unknown, but this has no special connection with recording devices.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. Government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine accidents, pipeline incidents and railroad accidents. When requested, the NTSB will assist the military with accident investigation. The NTSB is also in charge of investigating cases of hazardous waste releases that occur during transportation. Deborah Hersman was appointed as NTSB Chairman in July 2009.Stump, Jake. "Obama taps Spencer native to head agency", Charleston Daily Mail, July 10, 2009 Mark Rosenker was appointed as Vice Chairman in 2003, and served as Acting Chairman from March, 2005 to January, 2009. The agency is based in Washington, D.C..

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an agency of the United States Department of Transportation with authority to regulate and oversee all aspects of civil aviation in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 created the group under the name "Federal Aviation Agency", and adopted its current name in 1967 when it became a part of the United States Department of Transportation.

The Federal Aviation Administration's major roles include:

*Regulating U.S. commercial space transportation

*Regulating air navigation facilities' geometry and Flight inspection standards

*Encouraging and developing civil aeronautics, including new aviation technology

*Issuing, suspending, or revoking pilot certificates

*Regulating civil aviation to promote safety, especially through local offices called Flight Standards District Offices

*Developing and operating a system of air traffic control and navigation for both civil and military aircraft

*Researching and developing the National Airspace System and civil aeronautics

*Developing and carrying out programs to control aircraft noise and other environmental effects of civil aviation

Aircraft maintenance checks are periodic checks that have to be done on all aircraft after a certain amount of time or usage. Airlines casually refer to these checks as one of the following: A check, B check, C check, or D check. A and B checks are lighter checks, while C and D are considered heavier checks.