BBC World Service and now Witness History with me, Rachel Naylor.
Today I'm taking you back to when a plane's engines failed, forcing it to land on the
Hudson River in New York.
I've been speaking to the passenger who was last on board.
It's the 15th of January 2009.
An American salesman, Dave Sanderson, is on business in New York.
It's been a great trip but he can't wait to get home to Charlotte in North Carolina.
I got to the airport early and the flight was scheduled about 2:45 that afternoon.
The flights were delayed.
It was snowing in New York that day, but that's nothing unusual.
I was one of the first passengers to board the plane because of my status.
I flew on average a hundred times a year and went back to my seat at 15A.
I did everything I usually did.
I put my wallet in the briefcase, got the magazine out, and started to read, didn't
pay attention, didn't know where the exits were.
And then I read a little brochure that they always tell you to read.
US Airways Flight 1549 was cleared for takeoff from LaGuardia Airport at 3:24 p.m..
About 60 seconds after we took off is when I heard the explosion.
At that point in time, I just thought the plane lost an engine.
And I've been on planes before that have lost engines, so it's really no big deal.
I just thought, okay, we're going back to the airport to get another plane.
But Dave was wrong.
A flock of Canada geese had struck both sides of the plane at the same time.
Both engines were now failing.
The pilot, Captain Chesley Sully Sullenberger, radioed a mayday call back to New York.
This is Cactus 1539, hit first.
We've lost thrust in both engines.
We're turning back towards LaGuardia.
Air traffic control told LaGuardia's tower to hold all departures and initially advised
Captain Sully to land his plane on runway 13.
We're unable.
We may end up in the Hudson.
Air traffic control then off at a different runway.
Runway 31.
Unable.
As well as contacting nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, 27 kilometres northwest of
LaGuardia.
We can't do it.
Okay.
Which runway would you like at Teterboro?
We're going to be in the Hudson.
[BEEP]
I'm sorry, say again, Cactus.
Cactus 1549.
Radar contact is lost.
Before losing contact with the plane.
Meanwhile, on board, Dave and his fellow passengers were becoming aware something was seriously
wrong.
I saw the skyline of Manhattan up close.
I'm like, okay, this doesn't look right.
I saw a bridge coming up.
I've never seen a bridge on any flights that I've ever taken out in New York.
And then all of a sudden, it's the only time I heard anything said the plane was "This
is your Captain.
Brace for impact."
And how did you feel?
Well, at that moment, I did two things.
First thing I did is I prayed.
I just pray whoever that dude is up front, man, just get me down.
Just get me down now.
And then I reached down into my briefcase and got my wallet out and shoved it down into
my pants because I want somebody to know who I was in case something did happen.
And What was happening around you?
I heard some people making phone calls.
I heard people texting on their phones.
I put my head down.
I saw the movie of my life start going through my head.
I saw significant things in my life.
Also, this flash in my head, such as, you know, in high school when I was in the last
football game and I made a big tackle and little league baseball and [when] I met my
wife for the first time.
At 3:31 p.m., just seven minutes after takeoff.
That's shorter than the length of this program.
The plane crashed into the Hudson River at 230 kilometres per hour.
It hit so hard I went back to my seat and up my seat a couple of times.
All of a sudden we stopped.
It was eerily quiet.
I looked out the window and I saw light, so I knew that I was alive.
The river water that was rapidly filling the plane was five degrees celsius while the air
temperature was minus seven.
Soon as we hit, I had a game plan.
It was just to get to the aisle, get up and get out.
And then I got to the aisle and then I heard my mom start talking in my head.
My mom passed away in 1997, but there was something when I was a child that she would
say to me: "If you do the right thing, God will take care of you."
So I climbed over the seats towards the back of the plane to see if anybody needed help.
The back of the plane was already submerged.
It was about chest level deep water.
There were a couple of people who were struggling.
There was an elderly lady in the back.
She didn't want to move.
And so I just sort of got behind the elderly lady just to make sure she was moving.
The crew began evacuating the passengers onto the emergency inflatable slide, which became
a life raft deployed from the front right passenger door.
When that was full, passengers filed onto the wings.
I'm like, I'm out of here.
Time to go.
I've done what I can.
I looked out.
There's no room on that wing.
It's already filled up.
There was no room on the lifeboat.
It was filled up.
Within minutes of the crash, several boats arrived to help and began taking people on
board.
One of the boats that was part of the rescue was a tugboat.
He hit the front of the plane.
I felt water going up my back.
The first thought in my head was Titanic, and that's why I jumped in and started swimming
to the closest boat that I could find.
You know, I always thank my mom and dad for making sure I got swimming lessons.
That was the longest 15 yard swim I've ever had in my life.
Dave was the last passenger to get off the plane and managed to swim up to a ferry.
I got there and now they're yelling for me to climb.
And I yelled up: "I can't."
And then I heard my mom talking to me again because the word my mom hated most in life
was the word "can't".
So I got one arm up and the other arm up, and two guys grabbed me and pulled me and
threw me on the ferry.
I could barely breathe.
I thought, I'm not going to make it now.
Fortunately, there was somebody with the phone to let me make a phone call to my wife.
And I left a voice message and it was.
"I've been in a plane crash."
That's all I could get out.
All the passengers were off the plane and out of the water by 3:55 p.m. 24 minutes after
the crash.
Dave was taken to a triage centre where he was stripped of his freezing wet clothes.
I'm on the floor in my underwear.
I don't even know what's going on now, but all of a sudden I look up and there's a guy
walking towards me with a card in his hand.
He said, "Sir, I need your name.
I need your date of birth."
He writes it on the card.
He puts it on my right ankle, and then he just walks away.
And only thing I could associate with that, Rachel, was the TV show M*A*S*H. When they
tagged your toe in the Korean War, you're dead.
And that's when I thought: "I'm dead.".
Dave was one of 24 passengers taken to hospital.
Just two of them, including Dave, stayed overnight.
He had hypothermia and it took doctors five hours to warm up his organs to a safe temperature.
The next morning, after, I did a lot of morning shows and they came to the hospital and we
did like Good Morning America, The Early Show and all these shows.
We got done about 8:45am, 8:50am, and I said: "I want to go home."
I got a police escort to take me from New Jersey to New York in about 16 minutes.
I tell people, if you have a chance to get a police escort through Manhattan, take it.
There's nothing like it, right?
Amazing.
How did you feel about getting back on a plane the next morning?
Well, you know, I was in fast motion then the captain and first officer come out.
They said they de-boarded the plane because they wanted to talk to me, because they never
talked to anybody [who] survived a plane crash.
They were firing questions at me, but I had questions for them likewise, like: "Are you
going to get me over this bridge or are you going get me home?"
And the captain told me, he said: "Listen, I'm going to get you home safely.
What I'll do for you is this, when we get 3,000 feet, I'll ring the bell and you and
I will know where this happened."
They put me back in coach.
I didn't get first class.
I got free potato chips.
And then I hear ding, ding, ding.
I look out the window, and that's the moment, Rachel, that everything I heard, saw, felt,
smelt, tasted.
It just hit me.
I looked out that window after that bell rang and I'm like: "Wow.
Wow, I'm alive."
Incredibly, all 155 people on board U.S. Airways Flight 1549 survived and there were only a
few serious injuries.
Dave's only lasting injury is that he now wears glasses due to the jet fuel in the water,
damaging his eyes.
New York State Governor, David Paterson, called the incident a 'miracle on the Hudson'.
Each passenger later received a letter of apology, $5,000 in compensation for lost baggage
and a refund of their ticket price.
Dave is still a frequent flyer.
I'm usually only exit row because I want to know who's going to manage that wing if something
does happen and I do pay attention to everything they say because what I've realised is every
plane or equipment is different because you never know when something's going to happen.
And how do you feel about the crash?
Several years on.
It happened for a reason.
You got to look at the entire situation.
You have a plane in New York City, the busiest city in the world, at rush hour, at the busiest
time in the busiest city.
And passengers who came together as a team, who do not know each other or care about each
other.
And it shows the power of when you check your ego at the door.
Anything is possible.
Dave Sanderson, now a motivational speaker, was talking to me, Rachel Naylor, for that
episode of Witness History.