Feb 24, 2009 6:30 pm US/Eastern
Controller: Ditching Plane In N.Y. River Doomed
WASHINGTON (CBS) ―
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The air traffic controller who handled US Airways Flight 1549 says he thought he was hearing a death sentence when the pilot said he was ditching in New York's Hudson River. (File)
AP
He was the voice Capt. Chesley Sullenberger heard when he called "mayday" as US Airways Flight 1549 dropped from the sky.
And on Tuesday, for the first time, we're hearing from the air traffic controller about his version of those desperate moments ahead of the miracle splash landing on the Hudson River.
"I can tell you right now some of those aren't going to work," Patrick Harten said.
Harten had his best New York confidence on display Tuesday as he gave members of Congress blunt feedback on proposed LaGuardia Airport flight paths -- and a harrowing account of his attempt to guide Flight 1549 to safety last month.
He is the air traffic controller who first heard Capt. Sullenberger's decision to ditch in the Hudson River.
"I asked him to repeat himself even though I heard him just fine," Harten said. "I simply couldn't wrap my mind around those words. People simply don't survive landing in the Hudson and I thought it was his own death sentence. I thought at that moment I was going to be the last person to talk to anyone on that plane alive."
As the plane dropped below the tops of city buildings, it popped off radar coverage, reappeared and then vanished. Harten said his heart sank and he began to feel the first effects of post-traumatic stress.
"I was in no position to continue to work air traffic," Harten said. "It was the lowest low I've ever felt. I wanted to talk to my wife but I knew if I tried to speak or even heard her voice I would completely fall apart.
"I settled for a hasty text message, 'Had a crash, I'm not alright, can't talk now,'" Harten added. "She told me later she thought I'd been in a car crash, but the truth is I felt as if I'd been hit by a bus."
Harten, 35, works out of the Federal Aviation Administration's radar facility in Westbury. He lives in Long Beach and only recently returned to work.
Sullenberger, 58, who had never met Harten before Tuesday, offered him thanks for his cool demeanor during a very tense few moments.
NTSB investigators have said bird remains found in both engines of the downed plane have been identified as Canada geese.
Sullenberger and Skiles said anyone who's spent much time in cockpits has encountered bird strikes but that this one was exceptionally severe in knocking out both engines. Some gulls don't even dent the airplane, Skiles said, but this "was a bigger bird than I've ever hit before."
Sullenberger, who joined a US Airways predecessor in 1980, told the House aviation subcommittee Tuesday that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.
"The bankruptcies were used by some as a fishing expedition to get what they could not get in normal times," Sullenberger said of the airlines. He said the problems began with the deregulation of the industry in the 1970s.
The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps."
The subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard from the crew of Flight 1549, the air traffic controller who handled the flight and aviation experts to examine what safety lessons could be learned from the accident.
Sullenberger's co-pilot, Jeffrey B. Skiles, said unless federal laws are revised to improve labor-management relations "experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past." And Sullenberger added that without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the flying public."
Sullenberger himself has started a consulting business to help make ends meet. Skiles added, "For the last six years, I have worked seven days a week between my two jobs just to maintain a middle class standard of living."
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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