2009's Worst Travel Experience Is...

December 30, 2009 at 5:24 PM | by Jaunted09 | Comments (2)

When Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed in upstate NY last February, the disaster took the lives of all 49 passengers and ended the US's two-year record of no civilian aviation fatalities. A month earlier however, an emergency landing off Manhattan ended much less tragically, though to be honest we still can't believe that US Airways Flight 1549 ended the way it did.

A commercial jetliner had its engines knocked out, landed in the freezing waters of the Hudson River, evacuated the cabin, and the total number of people killed was zero? From the outside, the heroics are enough to make you tear up. For the passengers though, it royally sucked. The flight, plus some subsequent nonsense from US Air, easily qualifies the entire episode as 2009's Worst Travel Experience.

The story of the flight is now pretty famous, but just for the record: US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia bound for Charlotte on January 15, 2009 with 150 passengers and 5 crew. Within minutes the plane was hit by a flock of Canada Geese, which immediately knocked out both of the Airbus A320's engines.

The drama continues...

Too far from any airfield to make an emergency landing, the plane was guided into the Hudson River by Captain Sully Sullenberger. Over the next few minutes the crew safely evacuated all passengers to be picked up by nearby watercraft. Captain Sully walked through the aisles twice to ensure that everyone had been safely removed before exiting himself and helping to direct boats to stranded passengers.

In the meantime, those passengers were standing on wings, sitting in rafts, or trying to swim away. Water temperature for the swimming evacuees: 36F. Air temperature for the ones in rafts: 20F. There were 78 total injuries, not a few of them from hypothermia. After the evacuation everyone had to wait quite a while for their luggage, which we can't imagine was in any fit state.

US Airways then somehow managed to turn a branding boon into a minor controversy by offering only scant compensation. We later commented that there were no losers in the saga—and that's still true—but judged strictly as a travel experience, it's hard to imagine living through anything more traumatic.

[Photo: Greg L / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· Flight 1549 [Jaunted]
· All 2009 Travel Award stories [Jaunted]
· Jaunty winners for 2008 [Jaunted]

Jaunted

Select a Destination:

The Jauntys / 2009 Travel Awards / → All Tags