By Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York feted its latest hero, the pilot who landed a distressed US Airways jetliner on the Hudson River, saving all 155 on board in what experts called a masterful job under life-or-death pressure.
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger had yet to appear in public one day after he brought the Airbus A320 to a textbook emergency landing on the river between New York City and New Jersey in what New York Gov. David Paterson called "a miracle on the Hudson."
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the pilot would not be available to the media until he had finished providing information to federal investigators.
U.S. transportation investigators planned to interview Sullenberger on Friday and will review reports that the plane lost power in both engines when it struck a flock of birds shortly after taking off from New York's LaGuardia airport.
Experts from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are on scene but probably will not get their first look at the engines until the plane is hoisted from the water. The still intact jet is tethered to a downtown Manhattan seawall.
"Hemingway defined heroism once as grace under pressure and I think it's fair to say that Captain Sullenberger certainly displayed that yesterday," said Bloomberg, who will present the crew with a ceremonial key to the city.
"This is a story of heroes, something right out of a movie script," said Bloomberg, who also honoured police and fire department rescuers and the private ferry operators who rushed to the aid of the plane within minutes of it coming down.
Sullenberger, 57, a former U.S. Air Force pilot and air safety consultant, steered the crippled jetliner over the densely populated city and brought it down on the river, warning passengers to "brace for impact."
A stewardess broke a leg, but most people were unharmed except for suffering from the cold. Ferries rescued passengers from the wing, where they stood in 20 degree Fahrenheit (-6 Celsius) weather, their feet dipping into water of 41 degrees F (5 C).
CHECKED SINKING PLANE
As the plane began sinking, Sullenberger walked the aisle twice to make sure no one was left behind, Bloomberg said.
"After the crash, he was sitting there in the ferry terminal, wearing his hat, sipping his coffee and acting like nothing happened," one police source told the New York Daily News.
"He looked absolutely immaculate," a rescuer told the newspaper. "He looked like David Niven in an airplane uniform," the rescuer said, referring to the debonair British actor. "He looked unruffled."
"He's very controlled, very professional," his wife, Lorrie Sullenberger, told reporters on Friday. "He's a pilot's pilot. He loves the art of the airplane."
According to details pieced together from air traffic controllers and aviation officials with knowledge of the flight, it seemed as if the entire incident of several minutes passed in a flash, demanding that Sullenberger employ every bit of his 40 years of flight experience.
"I think all of us were in awe that there were survivors, but the fact that everybody survived shows that this pilot was a remarkable hero," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
According to controllers, an "eerie calm" defined controller and cockpit communications as options dwindled. The plane lacked the power return to LaGuardia or land at small Teterboro Airport across the river in New Jersey, an official of the controllers' union told Reuters.
"It was very clear to our controllers that he was going to make an attempt at the Hudson," said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
Radar showed the nearly 10-year-old jet making a series of tight left turns to head down the river, flying low over the George Washington Bridge before Sullenberger, from Danville, California, set the plane down in the river, kicking up a tremendous splash.
(Additional reporting by John Crawley in Washington, editing by Anthony Boadle)
