'Miracle on Hudson' as Jet Crash-Lands

Updated from 12:01 a.m. EST

A US Airways (LCC) jet with more than 150 passengers and crew members on board crash-landed into the Hudson River off Manhattan Thursday afternoon after a collision with a bird flock was suspected of disabling both of its engines.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that all on board -- 150 passengers, including an infant, and five crew members, survived the crash, in what was being hailed as an amazing crash landing and rescue.

Affer the plane, an Airbus 320, struck the frigid water, it slowly began to sink.

Miracle In The Hudson

Televised footage showed the plane partly above the water for about a half hour before the fuselage sank below the surface. Part of the tail section of the plane remained visible. The estimated location of the crash scene from the land was off West 48th Street, but the plane drifted south.

The jet appeared largely intact, and it was surrounded by several boats, including the Coast Guard, New York police vessels, and New York Waterway and Circle Line ferries.

As amazement over the crash turned to questions, a team of 20 National Transportation Safety Board investigators began looking into how the bizarre near-disaster happened.

US Airways CEO Doug Parker said in a statement it was "premature to speculate about the cause." Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said there was no immediate indication the incident was "anything other than an accident."

The flight, 1549 from LaGuardia Airport in New York bound for Charlotte Douglas International in North Carolina, left at 3:26 p.m. EST, according to information on US Airways' Web site. It began to go down about five minutes later.

The water was particularly chilly Thursday, as New York was experiencing one of the coldest days of the winter thus far. Weather.com said the air temperature was 20 degrees, but the wind chill was 7 degrees.

Passenger Alberto Panero told CNN: "The plane shook a bit, and immediately you could smell like smoke, fire. ... No one knew what was going on. Then the captain came on and said to brace for impact. ... Somehow the plane stayed afloat. Thank the Lord and thank the pilot."

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at an evening news conference. "... I talked to a passenger who said he was the last one up the aisle. ... The first and most important thing is this pilot did a wonderful job. The FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority police all worked together," Bloomberg said.. "The plan for these kinds of emergencies ... you saw it in action," he said. "One or two police divers went into the plane. An awful lot of people stepped right onto ferries and onto wings. Unified command, everything seemed to work as well as hoped."

New York Gov. David Paterson said "we had a Miracle on 34th Street and now a miracle on the Hudson. Never seen anything this magnificent." He said it was a potential tragedy that may have turned into "one of the most spectacular days in the history of the city."

Witnesses said the plane's pilot, later identified as Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, 57, from Danville, Calif., appeared to guide the plane down.

"I see a commercial airliner coming down, looking like it's landing right in the water," said Bob Read, who saw it from his office at the television news magazine "Inside Edition." ''This looked like a controlled descent."

Sullenberger is a former fighter pilot who runs a safety consulting firm in addition to flying commercial aircraft.

Sullenberger, who has flown for US Airways since 1980, flew F-4 fighter jets with the Air Force in the 1970s. He then served on a board that investigated aircraft accidents and participated later in several National Transportation Safety Board investigations.

He had been studying the psychology of keeping airline crews functioning even in the face of crisis, said Robert Bea, a civil engineer who co-founded UC Berkeley's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management.