F.A.A. Releases Flight 1549 Tapes



The tapes are dramatic, providing a moment by moment account of the flight’s communications from the time it suffered a “double bird strike” to the time it glided down without engine power onto the chilly surface of the Hudson River just off Manhattan’s West Side.

Listen to the Complete Audio

The whole exchange takes less than two minutes. At 3:27:32 p.m., a scant 2 minutes and 32 seconds after the flight was cleared for takeoff by the tower at LaGuardia, Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III alerted air traffic control of trouble.

In a deep, measured voice, Captain Sullenberger said, “Ah, this is, uh, Cactus 1539. Hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards La Guardia.”

His cadence is brisk, in the clipped syntax that is normal for communications between cockpits and controllers. If there was a sign of stress, it was that the captain had fumbled his call sign; “Cactus” is the correct sign for US Airways, but he was Flight 1549, not 1539 or 1529, as the flight was occasionally called, incorrectly, at various points in the tape.

The controller replied instantly, “O.K., yeah, you need to return to La Guardia, turn left, heading of, uh, 220,” that is, further to the left. Captain Sullenberger acknowledged, and the controller, in a windowless radar room at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control in Westbury, L.I., used a land line to reach the control tower.

“Tower, stop your departures,” he said. “We got an emergency returning.”

His voice was urgent but not evidently stressed, until he, too, bungled the call sign, calling it “1529.” The controller turned his attention back to the airplane at 3:28:05 p.m.

New York Tracon La Guardia Departure: Cactus 15-29, if we can get it to you, do you want to try to land runway 1-3?

AWE1549: We’re unable, we may end up in the Hudson.

Captain Sullenberger was in the unusual position of both flying an airliner and working the radio. Talking on the radio is usually the job of the other pilot, but in this case the first officer, Jeffrey B. Skiles, was running through an “engine restart checklist.”

The controller offered him coordinates from his position to the runway. “Unable,” Captain Sullenberger responded, in standard pilot phraseology.

The other La Guardia runway was also available, the controller said, but Captain Sullenberger replied, “I am not sure if we can make any runway.” He asked about “anything in New Jersey, maybe Teterboro?” He was given a routing to that airport, but then replied simply, “We can’t do it.”

“We’re going to be in the Hudson,” the captain said.

“I’m sorry, say again, Cactus?” the controller said.

But Captain Sullenberger had more serious problems that no controller could help him with; he did not radio back. His last communication was at 3:29:28, a few hundred feet over the Hudson. Soon after, a helicopter in flight reported that the airliner, an Airbus A320, was down near the Intrepid aircraft carrier, which is moored at 46th Street. All of the 155 people on board survived.

As the plane went down, air traffic controllers moved quickly to organize an emergency response — an exchange that is captured on another tape released Thursday called the “Cab Coordinator Position Audio.”

Just after the Airbus cleared the George Washington Bridge approaching its water landing, the La Guardia control tower coordinator reached out to the Port Authority:

3:28:53 p.m. La Guardia control coordinator: O.K., listen, ah, we’re going to tell you something important. It’s Cactus 1549. We see somebody low level in the Hudson river below 400. O.K.? You’re going to need to, um, alert the New York and New Jersey Port Authority police over there.

Less than a minute later, at 3:30 p.m. and 9 seconds, the plane hit the water. The La Guardia control coordinator immediately reached out to Kennedy International Airport air traffic control:

3:30:48 p.m. La Guardia: Get me a Police Department helicopter. Have you got one on your frequency?

J.F.K.: Say again.

La Guardia: Get me a Police Department helicopter if you got one on your frequency right now.

J.F.K.: We don’t have one right now. but we will make a call.

La Guardia: You get anybody you send them right into the Lincoln Tunnel. We had a Cactus Airbus go down in the water.

Below is the F.A.A. transcript of the communications between the plane and New York Tracon, or Terminal Radar Approach Control. All times are in Greenwich Mean Time, which is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

Update 2:51 p.m. For those wondering why US Airways jets would be referred to by the call sign Cactus, it stems from the 2005 merger of US Airways and America West. Cactus was America West’s call (perhaps because the airline is based in Tempe, AZ), and after the merger, it eventually became the call sign of US Airways. That also explains why Flight 1549 is referred to in the transcripts as AWE1549. AWE have long been the call letters of America West.

Tracon Transcript

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Interesting that in the transcript the flight was called 15-39, 15-29, and the correct 15-49 by the flight crew and TRACON.

Where is the transcript of the cockpit voice recordings? I want to hear what the pilot and the co-pilot actually said during this event.

That was intense, I have chills.

Glad everyone survived!!!

Where’s transcript from when Sully says “don’t worry, I’m the man?”

Doesn’t really matter if they call it 1529,39,49…that’s why ATC will sometimes assign entirely unrelated numbers to two aircraft near each other. If you have NW77 and NW177 in the area, for example, you might get this. Or if say a flight goes BOS-LGA-BNA (hypothetically) and BOS-LGA is still airborne when LGA-BNA takes off, you might see the same thing…

Thank you for the tape and transcripts. I was TRYING to listen to it on CNN live, however the announcer kept talking over it! Why do they always do that!

For a recording with so many long dead spaces, the suspense is oddly gripping. Just reading the transcript doesn’t capture the tension surrounding “we’re gonna be in the Hudson” and “radar contact is lost”.

That was one cool pilot.

Sully said “My plane”.

Sully said “My aircraft,” which is standard procedure.

Amazing calm from the pilot. Simple “unable.”

Everyone stayed cool. Can’t help but wonder: does the FAA only have a recording of communications with the tower? Or do they also have a recording of what took place in the tower during all those gaps in the tape? As far as the cockpit is concerned: assuming the “black box” is OK, I know they would have a cockpit recording.

[[4. February 5, 2009 10:58 am Where’s transcript from when Sully says “don’t worry, I’m the man?” — Adam]]

seriously. the tower guy is like, “uh, we have a runway at teterboro, seven miles away.”

and sully, the master of verbal economy, says “unable.”

the name is bond. james bond. or, the name is sullenberger. sully sullenberger.

It’s a very stark recording. Knowing from what we’ve read, and trying to imagine what was happening during the silence was difficult. I heard professionalism all around. Calm, tense, intense professionalism by regular folks doing their jobs ata the highest level at the toughest possible time.

where’s the part where Sully says “Damn, this thing floats better than my 22-ft Stingray”

Meanwhile, what’s the story with some passengers suing the airline for this crash? Perhaps they should thank US Airways for hiring incredibly competent pilots, and be on their way! Some people!

Wow. He was so cool through the whole thing. “We’re going in the Hudson.”

Wow – I’m so glad those guys know what they’re doing!

Interesting that the pilot never did declare an emergency. There is so much fear and stigma about using the “magic words” that nobody uses them.

Very intense – skip to counter at 12:15 for where it all goes critical.

I am still amazed that in the year 2009 the air traffic control system radio communication system still does not have some form of automatic identification. Every speaker must self-identify and there are still Unknown voices in every communications transcript. I know commercial aircraft have transponders but the radio communication between the tower and the cockpit has not improved since Guglielmo Marconi came up with the idea. We can trace the origin of e-mail, phone calls, and Twitter messages but not the voices controlling the aircraft that transport millions every day.

Chilling, I agree. I would add that both the pilots and the air traffic controllers are impressive. pilots and traffic controllers are impressive.

I’ve heard people say that pilots are over-paid bus drivers and that planes can just be flown by computer. Remember this the next time you hear something like that, or you’re boarding a plane with your loved ones.

These men and women climb into that claustrophobic little chamber at the front and cradle hundreds of lives in their hands every day. They’re a very special breed apart.

The professionalism of all involved shines when you hear them do their jobs rapidly and calmly in what they all know is a pending catastrophe.
Oh yeah, Sully is definitely the man.

The pilot’s responses are right on target. But,even as a pilot myself, I have to give big hand to the controller, who despite knowing that one of his plane’s had lost all thrust and was probably going in the Hudson River, managed to not only keep his cool and give regular altitude, heading and hand off commands to other airplanes but also to pick up the phone and talk to both LaGuardia ground and Teterboro tower to alert them of a possible emergency affecting their airspace as well.

Fantastic work by everyone – but that’s just how it’s supposed to be done.

ATC – the unsung heroes of airlines and aviation.