Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's January two thousand nine. The US Airways Flight fifty nine is being boarded at New York City's LaGuardia Airport. If all goes as planned, the plane will touch down in Charlotte, North Carolina, later that evening. All does not go as planned. It turned out okay, but it was harrowing at PM Eastern Standard time. The aircraft, now laden with a hundred and fifty passengers
and five crew members, takes off. Within minutes, disaster strikes. The plane is unexpectedly bombarded by a flock of Canada geese, causing both engines to shut down. Feet that's eight fifty above one of the world's biggest cities. San's engines, the airliner loses almost all of its thrust. This is a serious problem because thrust is the physical force that moves
flying planes in the direction of motion. Unable to restart the engines, Captain Chelsea Sellenberger nickname Sully, and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles have to act fast. Time is running short and they're losing altitude. If you were around and tuned into the news that winter in two thousand nine. You probably remember the amazing feet the pilots pulled off. After considering detours to LaGuardia and an airport in New Jersey, Sellenberger and Skiles made an emergency landing on the frigid
Hudson River. Although some passengers did have serious injuries, everyone aboard that plane lived to tell the tale. New York Governor David Patterson called it a miracle on the Hudson. The landing was both dramatic and unusual, but this wasn't the first time passing birds made trouble for a large aircraft. When unfortunate goals or geese gets sucked into a plane's engine or engines, they can do serious damage to machinery.
These so called bird strikes are the most common cause of dual engine failure on two engine airplanes like the one that Selinberger was flying. Since the nineteen forties, some airports have used falconers to help scare unwanted birds off of their premises. The mere sight of a trained hawker falcon can repel other avian species from the area, but other accidents can happen too. Maybe there's ice forming in
the carburetor, or perhaps the vehicle just doesn't have enough fuel. Three, A perfect storm of technical issues and unit conversion mistakes left an air Canada bowing seven sixty seven without fuel some forty feet that's twelve thousand, five hundred meters over central Canada. Before long, it lost power to both engines. After descending at a rate of feet that's seven hundred and sixty per minute, the pilots were able to glide their bowing all the way to a safe, albeit bumpy
landing on a race car track. The pilots were hailed here and the airplane was dubbed the Gimli Glider after the town where it landed. Essentially, any plane can glide if the need arises, and in situations where all the engines have failed, the pilots have to expect the plane to do some gliding without the thrust those engines are built to provide. The plane can't help but lose altitude. But how far can a plane glide when it's not
designed to be a glider. Aircrafts whose engines conk out at higher elevations can glide for longer periods of time. This is one of the reasons why Selinberger and Skiles Hudson River landing was so impressive they had to glide their way to safety in a matter of minutes from a pretty low altitude. Everything happened very fast on US Airways flight. The plane hit the birds within two minutes of taking off, and just three minutes later the plane
was in the Hudson River. Obviously, planes come in all shapes and sizes, so you're flying one, it's important to know your vehicle's best glide speed. In a nutshell, this is the speed that will let your airplane travel the farthest distance while sacrificing the least amount of altitude. A related concept is the minimum sinc speed, or the pace of travel that will maximize how much time you can spend gliding. Depending on your situation, you may choose to
prioritize time over distance or vice versa. Writing for USA Today, in veteran pilot John Cox stated that a jetliner could probably be expected to glide for around a hundred miles that's a hundred and sixty KOs if all its engines failed thirty thousand feet that's about nine thousand meters above ground level. That's around the distance between Los Angeles and Palm Springs or New York City in Atlantic City, though he noted quote having all engines quit in a modern
airplane is extremely rare, which is reassuring. Today's episode is based on the article how far can a plain glide if its engines fail? On how stuff works dot Com written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,