"A double bird strike" - UPDATE with Water Landing

It is becoming increasingly clear that a small group of radicalized feathered foes are hell-bent on destroying our way of life.

But thanks to a former Air Force fighter pilot for overcoming this attack

From the NY Times:

Minutes after departing La Guardia Airport, what the crew of US Airways Flight 1549 faced Thursday afternoon, at 3,200 feet over the central Bronx, was a really quick decision.

The plane had suffered “a double bird strike,” one of the pilots told an air traffic controller at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control.

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Teterboro, in New Jersey, the controller replied, and instructed the pilot to fly south along the Hudson River, then swing back to the north to land there.

Instead, the pilot told the controller that they would ditch the plane in the river. They then cleared the George Washington Bridge by about 900 feet, according to controllers, and at a point near the end of West 48th Street in Midtown Manhattan, the plane slid into the river’s smooth, gray waters.

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Captain Sullenberger, known as Sully, flew the F-4 for the United States Air Force for seven years in the 1970s after graduating from the United States Air Force Academy. He joined USAir, as it was called at the time, in 1980 and became a “check airman,” training and evaluating new pilots or those changing to new aircraft or moving up to captain. He also was an accident investigator for the union, the Air Line Pilots Association.

JR Martinez & Beth Ehlers on The View

In case you missed this:

J.R. Martinez was featured in the Daily News

See how J.R. Uses His Scars To Assist Others

You can find his blog here

Via Patti's Email:

Greetings Angels I wanted to share this with as many of you as I can and also wanted to thank those that sent Christmas cards and well wishes via email. It was great to be home this Christmas and to be able to see my older brother again, last time we saw each other it was over a cup of coffee in Iraq. The family and I are doing well.

As many of you know I not only serve in the military but I also do all I can to take care of my brothers and sisters especially those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan that are severely wounded.
JR Martinez is a very good friend of mine and we met while we were doing events to increase public awareness of the wounded coming home. He is an awesome young man that I greatly admire and would do anything in the world for him. My daughter fell in love with him the first time she met him and they too keep contact.
OK I will get to the point, JR is now on the soap opera All My Children. Please check out his guest appearance on the TV show the View www.youtube.com/watch?v=skRsfp2nfYI
I just want you to see the difference each one of you makes in the lives of our troops.
God Bless

Blogging General Reaches Out to Troops, Blows Off Security Fears

Via Danger Room:

"There are some concerns by some people, based on the nature of our hierarchical organization, who feel this is inappropriate -- going around the chain of command," Major General Michael Oates, the commander of the Army's Task Force Mountain, tells Danger Room. "It is not in fact going around the chain of command; it allows us to connect to the chain of command in ways we have not been able to experience before."

The general's blog posts are simple -- questions, mostly, designed to be conversation starters. A quick query, on "what need to be changed," led to an improvement in mental health care at Ft. Drum, New York, where is unit is based. Another on "tour lengths in Iraq" sparked a fevered, 40-comment debate with soldiers and family members taking Oates to task in ways that would be unimaginable face-to-face. "Honestly no one really cares what we think," one commenter wrote. "Asking this question is a futile attempt at appearing to be concerned with the welfare of soldiers and their families," sighed another.

Oates doesn't seem bothered by the push-back. "I enjoy the open engagement with my soldiers. I'm interested in hearing their thoughts. And I have no problem with challenging them in an honest open fashion. I think this medium allows that," he says.

Ironically, Oates had to wait until he got over to Iraq to start his social media push; a lumbering military bureaucracy kept him from blogging, while his troops were stationed at Ft. Drum. "We did not get anywhere with it while we were in the United States because the rules, procedures, policies, and regulations are extremely inhibiting to doing that sort of thing."

In many ways it's emblematic of the Army's uncomfortable, uneven relationship with these new ways of publishing. Some generals see the sites as a security risk -- who knows what a blogger might say? Other senior officers are extending a wavering toe into the blogosphere, with stilted, irregular posts. Army public affairs holds private roundtables with top bloggers. At the same time, service secrecy regulations, read literally, make it next-to-impossible for average soldiers to blog.

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The general shrugs the interactions off as no big deal. "Fundamentally what I'm doing is not new. What I'm doing is communicating with my soldiers. What's new is the medium in which we're communicating."

Full story here