Video game simulates pilot Sullenberger's Hudson landing

Want to be like Sully? The crash-landing of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River has inspired a free online video game: "Hero on the Hudson."

The game gives players a scenario - "Both engines are out. The plane is too low and too slow to make it to the airport. You decide to make emergency landing in the river" - and allows a player to control the aircraft using a computer keyboard's left and right arrows.

With a successful landing in the water, you are a hero just like pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, whose skill meant the survival of all 155 people on Flight 1549. If you don't land the plane successfully, it unceremoniously sinks in the digital river.

"I think it's natural for someone to want to capitalize on a sensational event like that," said Todd Wissing of Raleigh, N.C., an 18-year veteran pilot with American Airlines. Though Wissing had not heard of the game, he said, "It sounds like it might not be in the best taste, but the fact that the event itself had a happy ending makes it a bit more palatable."

The game elicited mixed feelings yesterday from some of the flight's survivors.

"People are crazy," laughed Diane Higgins, 58, from her home upstate in Goshen. "They have nothing better to do with their time, I guess."

Others, however, were given pause.

"All of this is still so fresh and new," said Alexandra Spera, 39, of Charlotte, N.C., whose husband, Vince, was a passenger on the flight. "To inject humor into it? I don't know if I'm ready yet."

The video game by Orbs Games Limited - which lists its chief executive as Andriy Sharanevych of Kiev, Ukraine - was the featured game Friday on Tastyplay.com. Players gave it 3 1/2 stars on a five-star scale.

According to his biography on an online social networking site, Sharanevych has a bachelor's degree from National Technical University of Ukraine in Kiev and operates several video-game Web sites. He responded Friday to an initial e-mail, but did not answer subsequent questions.

To veteran pilots such as Bob Ober of East Setauket - a pilot with Delta Air Lines and a simulation instructor for more than 15 years who had not played the game - it's "not the least bit representative of being a pilot."

And, he said, one doesn't have to be a pilot to see the game is tasteless. "It would be like if they made a video game of an execution," he said.