Everybody lauded the calm & heroism of the pilot who landed the A320 into the Hudson river on January the 15th.
But listening to the tape also shows how calm & professional the Air Traffic Controllers where !
The only small glitch from Tracon at that point was that he said to Laguardia something like “bird strike he lost all engines uhh.. and lost thrust too” (I’d say that’s about the only moment where Tracon seems to be trying to collect himself) – apparently Laguardia Control wasn’t sure he meant whether he lost thrust on both or on #2 only ! Now.. Hear how calm Laguardia and suddenly focused trying to get all the elements – asking confirmation about whether he had lost thrust on 1 or both engines (a very critical information) ! Tracon reconfirms – and at that point, they get about as efficient as they can get !
Within a 30 second time frame, they managed to free up and ensure accessibility for 4 runways at 3 different airports (Laguardia was available probably less than 10 secs after the original call, Teterboro & Newark), offering all the different possibilities that might assist the crippled aircraft – Then gives headings & ETAs.
They obviously knew what they were doing all along.
When Tracon hailed Teterboro (something that didn’t take but a couple of seconds – you can clearly hear him dialing out & getting an answer in a blink of an eye) it only took just less than 5 seconds (including a ‘Hey Guys !’ – clearly indicating most communications are probably pure routine) for that controller to understand the emergency of the situation and to act upon it – offering available runways he had.
No one got excited. Everyone knew they had a job to do – and did it superbly. Ok, in the end, the ATCs couldn’t do much in that particular case, but think of ALL the incidents we never hear about where some ATC saved the day by calmly, systematically, offering the possibilities for an aircraft in a difficult situation so that they can get out of whatever mess they are in – and finally land the aircraft safely – without anyone ever hearing about it !
Then you also get the Pilot from 2718 offering clarification indicating Cactus 1529 was saying he was going on the Hudson river (Understandable he did so. The indicated destination was unusual enough that everyone had to make sure they understood that correctly !)
I don’t know at that point. But making sure that everyone was apraised of the final destination of the flight might have saved the day by shaving a couple minutes off of recue operations !
And of course, everyone made it safe thanks to a superb water landing and the quick response from everyone on site at that time. But the ATCs really did a magnificent job !