Tri-State News - 7online.com">

NEW YORK (WABC) -- The passengers of Flight 1549 were soaked and freezing, but they were also alive. "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

By MATTHEW L. WALD and AL BAKER
Published: January 17, 2009
Just seconds after the first officer of US Airways Flight 1549, leaving La Guardia Airport and bound for Charlotte, N.C., pointed the nose of his jet into the sky, he noticed that there were birds on the right side — “in a perfect line formation.”The plane’s captain, who had been busy watching the cockpit instruments, managing the radios and looking at charts, then looked up.

The windscreen, he told investigators, was filled with birds. The plane, at roughly 3,000 feet, was going at least 250 miles an hour. The captain’s first instinct, he said, was to duck.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The pilot who landed a crippled US Airways jetliner on the Hudson River thought there would have been "catastrophic consequences" if he tried to make it to a nearby airport, a National Transportation Safety Board official said Saturday night.