Name: 14 years ago: Local survivor recalls Miracle on the Hudson
Uploaded: 2023-01-17T19:20:42-0500
Duration: 187388
Description: It happened 14 years ago this week. What should have been a routine flight from New York to Charlotte instead became the Miracle on the Hudson. Tonight, we find our Tar Heel Traveler in Charlotte. Scott Mason brings us the story of Steve O'Brien--a survivor's story from Flight 1549.

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It happened 14 years ago this week. What should have been a routine flight from New York to Charlotte instead became the Miracle on the Hudson. Tonight, we find our Tar Heel Traveler in Charlotte. Scott Mason brings us the story of Steve O'Brien--a survivor's story from Flight 1549.

WANT. >> IT HAPPENED 14 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK. WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROUTINE FLIGHT FROM NEW YORK TO CHARLOTTE INSTEAD BECAME THE MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON. AND TONIGHT WE FIND OUR TAR HEEL TRAVELER IN CHARLOTTE. SCOTT MASON BRINGS US THE STORY OF STEVE O'BRIEN IS A SURVIVOR STORY FROM FLIGHT 15. 49. >> AND I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ON. THE PLANE WAS SUPPOSED TO ACTUALLY FLY BACK THE DAY BEFORE THE DISTRICT TO 3900. SURE. A LOT OF TRUST AND HOPE FOR THE RETURN FLIGHT OR SOMEONE THAT WAS JUST TOO HUGE. >> WHO ATTACKED US 15. 29, WHICH ENGINES HE LOST THRUST IN BOTH ENGINES. HE SAID GOT IT. THE PLANE KIND OF CHARTERED IN MIDAIR AND THEN YOU COULD FEEL LIKE A WAR LAW OF THE ENGINES JUST KIND OF GOING DOWN. HE WANT TO TRY TO LAND 1, PARADE. I'VE ONLY MADE THE LAST, YOU KNOW, SOMETHING'S HAPPENED TO THE PLANE. OBVIOUSLY, I DON'T THINK IN MY WILDEST IMAGINATIONS THAT WE'RE IN A CRASH JUST 15 POINT, I COULD BE LEFT TRAFFIC TO RUNWAY 3, 1, HOWEVER, OKAY, WHAT DO YOU NEED TO WIN? WE JUST KEPT GOING LOWER AND LOWER. AND I REMEMBER SITTING THERE THINKING LIKE. THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN. I JUST GOT ON THE PLANE AT LAGUARDIA AND NOW I'M GOING TO THIS. IT'S 2009 PLANES DON'T. >> PLANES DON'T CRASH IN NEW YORK RIGHT TO A FAIR IQ AND RUNNING. I WANTED >> OK, WHICH RUNWAY WOULD LIKE IT TO BE WERE CRASHING. NOW. >> AND, YOU KNOW, JUST THINKING ABOUT MY FAMILY, YOU KNOW, TILL THE VERY END, I THINK HE SAID HE'S GOING TO CAUSE. I WAS SITTING THERE BRACED AND I COULD SEE OUT OF THE LEFT WINDOW SON AND WATER COMING UP AND STARTING TO HIT THE WINDOW AND THEN JUST STOPPED AND EVERYBODY KIND OF STOPPED FOR A SPLIT SECOND. THE WHOLE PLANE WAS JUST QUIET. AND PEACEFUL AND THEN EVERYBODY WAS JUST LIKE YOU WERE STILL HERE. BUT PEOPLE ARE IN THE WATER. SO I JUST STEPPED OUT ONTO THE WING AND HELD THE SEAT CUSHION AND JUMPED INTO THE WATER LIKE TO JUMP INTO A SWIMMING POOL. EVERY MEMBER TOOK MY BREATH AWAY LIKE IT WAS A WHOLE. AND THEN WE SWAM OVER TO THAT RAFT AND THEY PULLED US INTO THE RAFT. THOSE ARE THE CLOTHES THAT I WAS WEARING WENT DOWN IN THE PLANE. I CAN'T EXPLAIN WHY, BUT I HAVE A HARD TIME THROWN HIM OUT WHEN THE CAR THAT'S ABOUT TO GET PULLED OUT FROM UNDER YOU. IT'S THE DAY-TO-DAY THINGS THAT JUST THE LITTLE THINGS THAT YOU DO EVERY DAY THAT YOU WANT TO ADD A CHANCE TO DO AGAIN. >> AND THAT'S WHAT YOU KNOW, I TRIED TO TELL YOU MORE WORKERS. THAT'S WHAT MAKES UP YOUR LIFE. LIKE MY PLANE FELL OUT OF THE SKY AND LANDED IN THE HUDSON RIVER. AND I I WALKED >> SCOTT MASON, OUR TAR HEEL TRAVEL. FIRST OF ALL, HOW IS THAT 14 YEARS YESTERDAY AND THE FACT THAT HE HELD ONTO HIS CLOTHES, THAT'S THAT'S TELLING TO ME. STEVE O'BRIEN STILL LIVES IN CHARLOTTE. THIS REASON NOW HE STILL FLIES HE'S FOREVER GRATEFUL TO THE PILOT. SULLY SULLENBERGER SAYS HE OWES THE

Scott Mason

14 years ago: Local survivor recalls Miracle on the Hudson 

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<p>Good morning. I'm meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner. We have a gorgeous day and our forecast, our temperatures are pleasantly cool this morning, skies are clear and our wind is mostly calm. Now. There may be some gusts that happened later on this afternoon. We could be gusting 15 to almost 20 MPH in the middle of the day and then we'll see the wind starting to die down. It's not going to be anything that causes you any real issues, but just a touch on the breezy side. Midday. Our temperatures heading out the door this morning are chilly anywhere from mid forties to mid f depending on where you are. And it's going to be a lovely day today. Lunch outside. Absolutely. If I could put some exclamation points on this, I would almost 70 at lunchtime humidity, low, lots of sunshine, take advantage of this absolute gorgeous afternoon for lunch outside or whatever it is that you can do our highs mid afternoon, 74 in Raleigh, 72 in Durham and 78 in Fayetteville. So such a pretty day. Uh, lots of things to uh to do. It's a very busy time time of year lots of festivals and things. And I imagine with game three, the hurricanes versus the Islanders, there will be a lot of people out at watch parties, temperatures before the game will be dropping to around 60 then on into the upper fifties, by the time the game is over, cool, beautiful sunny conditions and low humidity. Look at that low humidity. It's in the fifties all the way up through Saturday and Sunday. But then on Monday it starts to climb up to 60 it gets into the sixties. That's when you start to notice it. You know, some days you're like, it feels humid. So we're going to start to feel it. It's not going to be overwhelming, you know, not looking at steamy or tropical conditions, but it will start to creep up as we get into the weekend. Look at the temperature change that we're going to see. You see the blue color contours, that's where temperatures are either below normal or close to normal. And then once we get into Sunday and much of next week, we're going to see temperatures climbing above normal. So we're talking about some eighties. Our normal highs are in the mid seventies and would be pretty close to that through Saturday. Then we start to climb into the eighties and we have the potential on Tuesday to be close to a record. The uh high temperature 88 the record nine back in 1906. So getting close to record territory. By the, uh, beginning of next week, it stays mainly dry. The only real chance of any rain we have is a tiny chance on Tuesday. Just a 20% chance. So we have a very dry period in our seven day forecast.</p>

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Brian Shrader flies over the site of a plane crash at Raleigh-Durham International Airport approximately three hours after the accident.

Seen some activity just in the past 10 minutes or so. I want to take you outside Sky five right now for a live look at the scene. We saw a van being escorted to the runway there and someone got out and now there appears to be a really careful inspection of the debris going on. So we're working to confirm if that may be the NTSB investigation team arriving at the scene. Let's zoom out and give you some about where this is. There are two main runways at RDU International and this is in the grassy field next to the runway that mostly serves terminal one on the east side of the airport, that runway remains closed while this investigation continues at the top of your screen. That is the other main runway that serves terminal two, mostly that runway is open. So we have two things going on here that could affect your flights for the rest of the day and maybe even into tomorrow, the airport takeoff and landing capacity is roughly reduced by half because they are only working with one runway. And if you have a flight coming out of terminal one, maybe Southwest, you're going to have to take that crossover all the way out to that other runway. It's going to add a lot of extra time.

Sky 5 flies over RDU plane crash 3 hours later 

A UNC Health physician and pilot were taken to the hospital Wednesday after a small plane crashed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU).


Sky 5 flies over plane crash at RDU

RDU Airport Authority gives an update on a plane crash that sent a physician and pilot to the hospital. The crash occurred Wednesday morning on a flight that took off from Wilmington.

<p>Landguth first, I want to extend my thoughts to those affected by this morning's aircraft accident and thank our first responders for their quick action to respond. The airport authority and its mutual aid partners responded to an aircraft accident at RDU involving a general aviation aircraft. The accident occurred at approximately 10:10 a.m. in the grass next to runway five, right 23 left. The flight was arriving from Wilmington, North Carolina. The A the aircraft is owned by medical Air Inc and operated by UN C air operations. The aircraft had two people on board, one pilot and one passenger. Both were transported to area hospitals. The federal A Bush administration issued a ground stop that was lifted at approximately 1130 this morning. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have both been notified. The National Transportation Safety Board is en route and expected to arrive within the next hour at which time we will conduct an accident investigation. Rdu's runway five left 23 right reopened to departing and arriving aircraft around 11:30 a.m. this morning. Are you experiencing approximately 70 delays and several arriving flights were diverted to other airports? Until ground stock was lifted, travelers should contact their airline for the latest updates regarding the flight status. And of course questions about the identity and condition of the pilot and passenger should be directed to UN C health. And at this time I'll try to answer any questions. You may have, uh, the one, any other accidents in, in the past. I'm not familiar with any other accidents have occurred with that operation. I don't know, uh, that's the role of the National Transportation Safety Board. They'll actually come in and do the investigation. Uh, and at some point in the future, they write up a report and determine what the cause of the accident was. You know, that there was no notification to the airport authority or to the FAA uh about any type of emergency on board. Do we have a guy? We don't, all we know that we've got them out of the airplane and we've got them transported to local hospitals. We know situations like this and delays have a ripple effect on, you know, flights. Do you have any idea what type of impact we'll see here in our view and for not sure, but what we're going to encourage everybody to do is reach out to your airlines. We'll be able to give you real time information about the impact of your particular flight. Ok. I believe some of them went to Greensboro and I think a couple went to Charlotte as well. What, what to be impacted due to the NTSD. Say that one more time at this point in time, what we call the west side of our airport is now open the investigation they'll conduct will all be on the east side. So at this point, we are anticipating normal operations returning to normal operations from this point forward. I don't think that anything that they're doing regarding the investigation or where they would have to investigate would have any impact to the west side of the airport. No, the aircraft is still on the airfield itself. It's on the east side of the field. So terminal one that runways the east side of the field, that's where the debris field actually sits, the west side of the field is open and operational and safe to operate. Not that I'm aware of in operations for you throughout this event today. What was your main concern concerning the passengers that were in the internals? Right. I think our primary focus when, when that accident occurred were the two people sitting in that aircraft? Our primary mission is to make sure we can get to them and try to rescue them and try to make sure that we can get them in a safe condition as fast as we possibly can. Uh secondarily is trying to figure out then how we recover and get our operations back up and running. Mhm. How does that affect? What goes on term? Yeah, so great. Question. So the team has figured out a way to get all the aircraft they're gonna operate at terminal one. Your Southwest develops. Uh We've got a crossover taxi way that we can actually get them through our general aviation aircraft. We've got a crossover taxiway, we can get them to. But the rest of the uh accident scene is actually kind of isolated and closed and locked off. Yeah, you're terminal one at this point in time. Once they can get back on their schedule, it's going to be a normal operations. All right. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you. Grab your phone, right.</p>

14 years ago: Local survivor recalls Miracle on the Hudson

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14 years ago: Local survivor recalls Miracle on the Hudson

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