Controller thought all would die on airliner

WASHINGTON — The air traffic controller who handled Flight 1549 thought ditching in the Hudson River amounted to a death sentence for all aboard. Now the veteran pilot who pulled off the feat safely says harsh pay cuts are driving experienced pilots from the cockpit.

"People don't survive landings on the Hudson River," 10-year veteran controller Patrick Harten told the House aviation subcommittee Tuesday in his first public description of how he tried to land the jetliner that lost power in both jets when it hit Canada geese after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport.

"I thought it was his own death sentence," Harten said of the moment when US Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger radioed that he was going into the river. Defying the odds, Sullenberger delicately glided the Airbus A320 down in one piece and all 155 people aboard survived the Jan. 15 water landing.

Sullenberger, a 58-year-old who joined a US Airways predecessor in 1980, and his co-pilot, Jeffrey B. Skiles, told the panel that experienced pilots are quitting because of deep cuts in their pay and benefits.

Skiles said unless federal laws are revised to improve labor-management relations, "experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past." Sullenberger added that without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the flying public."

Not true, said the airline industry. "We foresee no shortage of experienced and qualified pilots," Air Transport Association spokesman David Castelveter said in a statement. "There currently is a surplus of experienced pilots who have been furloughed as a result of industry downsizing, pilots awaiting recall. Safety in no way will be compromised."

Harten, the 35-year-old controller, riveted the hearing with his account of the 3.5 minutes during which he spoke with the crippled jetliner after the bird strike at an altitude of 2,750 feet.

When Sullenberger said he couldn't make it either back to LaGuardia or to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and would ditch in the river that separates New York and New Jersey, Harten testified, "I believed at that moment I was going to be the last person to talk to anyone on that plane alive."

But Sullenberger safely glided the jetliner into the water near ferry boats that picked the passengers off the plane's wings before it sank in icy waters.

Harten, who has spent his entire career at the radar facility in Westbury, N.Y., that handles air traffic within 40 miles of three major airports, struggled vainly to help guide the airliner to a landing strip.