First, I can’t believe a plane crashed into the Hudson river. Second, I can’t believe everyone survived. I was away for an extended weekend, so I missed all of the media coverage, but this a freaking amazing story. It’s one of the rare times in my life that I’m craving more media coverage of an event.

Personally, I always thought that the flotation devices on large airplanes were purely for show (i.e. to give the passengers something to do as they plummet to their deaths) but apparently planes can land on water. Who knew? Well, I guess that pilot knew. Are more crashing airplanes going to attempt water landings in the future? I really don’t know the stats, but it seems whenever a plane crashes in the middle of a cornfield, people don’t walk away from it. Maybe water is the way to go (if you’re crashing, of course, you might want to aim for an airport if your engines are still intact, since passengers seem to prefer it).

It also probably helped that the plane crashed in the Hudson River next to Manhattan, as opposed to a random river in the middle of nowhere. There are about ten different ferries on the Hudson at any given moment and that really sped up the plane evacuation. So make a note, if your plane is going down, mention to the pilot to crash in a highly trafficked river.

The crazy thing is that this story should probably make me less worried, because all of the people survived. But it definitely makes me more worried. Stupid geese.