For salvagers of Hudson plane, no easy task
Employees of the Heavy Lift & Salvage Division of Weeks Marine were responsible for salvaging the US Airways jet that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. (Jan. 15, 2009) Credit: Ted Phillips
When a US Airways jet made an incredible emergency landing in the icy Hudson two years ago, it was a happy ending for the 150 passengers and five crew members. But for the people who were to salvage the plane, the story was just starting.
Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger had saved the lives of all aboard Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009, and the Airbus A320 was intact. But getting the plane out of the water was not going to be easy.
"You didn't want to go and just lift the thing out of the water when it was full of water, because now not only are you lifting the weight of the plane, you're also lifting the weight of the water that's inside the plane," recalled Jason Marchioni, who was in charge of claiming the jet for Weeks Marine Inc., a Cranford, N.J., marine construction and salvage firm.
Marchioni, 37, manager for heavy lift operations, said he had done plenty of marine salvage and moving of dry planes onto the USS Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, but this was his first plane salvage.
It was fraught with peril for some of those involved in the operation, as well as the Hudson River and its denizens, he said.
One possibility was that the plane would break apart under the added water weight, waterlogged luggage and cargo. Also, the plane had just been loaded with fuel for its intended flight to Charlotte, N.C., and had ditched in the river only six minutes after takeoff on that Thursday afternoon from LaGuardia Airport.
"There was still fuel onboard the plane, so they were concerned with that," Marchioni said, referring to federal officials and the Coast Guard. "They didn't want to have a fuel spill, and have an environmental problem."
Jan. 16, 2009 front cover of Newsday.
Tugboats had nudged the floating plane to Battery Park City, where it sank, with the right wing becoming wedged under a pier.
The company moved a floating crane into a position that helped block ice in the area where divers were operating in heated suits. After getting approval from the government, the crew spent that Saturday putting slings around the wings and the tail of the plane.
That weekend, everyone working on the effort was cognizant of crowds that gathered in the freezing cold for a glimpse of history.
"It was pretty public," Marchioni said. "You don't want to go in there and get into this thing and the plane winds up breaking in half on you."
"We were dealing with cold temperatures, we were dealing with ice floes that were coming down the river that the divers had to contend with," he said. "Visibility wasn't very good at all - they probably had about 16 to 20 inches of visibility, so all the work they had to do was done more by feel than by sight."
Once the crane went into action, the jet's right wing first was dislodged from beneath the pier. Then workers pulled the plane up with a series of lifts and tilts that drained most of the water out. An hour later the plane was placed onto a barge and the salvage declared a "textbook" success, Marchioni said.
The plane then was taken to a New Jersey warehouse to be studied by federal safety officials.
"It's great, because nobody got seriously injured, nobody died," he said of the Flight 1549 saga. "You know, the economy was in a downturn and it was a good story. There was a lot of bad news coming out, and this was actually a good story at that point in time."
Two years later, the plane - minus its engines, wings and tail - soon may be headed to North Carolina after all, finding a home in the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte.
