Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson

On January 15, 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York when a flock of Canada geese collided with it, destroying both of its engines. Over the next three minutes, the planes pilot, Chesley Sully Sullenberger, managed to glide it to a safe landing in the Hudson River. It was an instant media sensation, the Miracle on the Hudson, and Captain Sully was the hero. But how much of the success of this dramatic landing can actually be credited to the genius of the pilot? To what extent is the miracle on the Hudson the result of extraordinarybut not widely known, and in some cases quite controversialadvances in aviation and computer technology over the past twenty years? In Fly by Wire, one of Americas greatest journalists takes us on a strange and unexpected journey into the fascinating world of advanced aviation. From the testing laboratories where engineers st