Cockpit Audio of Airways Flight 1549 (New Release)

Hear the pilot of Flight 1549 tell confused controllers that he's landing in the river.



Minutes after he reported hitting birds and losing power in both engines, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 calmly told an air traffic controller the plane would ditch into the Hudson River....

"We can't do it," pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger said at 3:29 p.m. on January 15, in response to efforts to land the plane at New Jersey's Teterboro airport, according to a recording released Thursday by the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We're gonna be in the Hudson," Sullenberger said, about three and a half minutes after the Airbus A320 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport.

"I'm sorry, say again," said the controller, from New York Tracon, a radar facility on Long Island that handles flights after they depart from LaGuardia or Teterboro airports.. Listen to pilot talk to controllers